Budget 2024: If there was one standout positive, it was this...
Every Budget is followed by experts trying to identify the pluses. If they wanted to save time they could have come to Gloucester Rugby’s Kingsholm stadium and seen a major positive.
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Dear Readers,
We hope your week is going well and if you were wishing for anything from yesterday’s Budget, that Mr Hunt delivered it. Which probably doesn’t cover off that many of you!
Why did we go big on the Budget in this edition, rather than the other super positive news around – that The Phoenix Village project for the former Fleece Hotel in Gloucester has won planning and the news that £1.5 million is heading Gloucester’s way to boost culture in the city?
The answer is simple. The two projects above will get plenty of air time yet (we do cover them off below anyway) - and we haven’t really gone big on the Budget either. For Raikes, what was on display yesterday at Gloucester Rugby Club - where we watched the Chancellor’s announcement - was a chance to observe the point at which the Budget meets real people, the business community of Gloucestershire.
These are the people whose reaction matters, because no matter what Hunt said, what colour team walks away the winner come this year’s election, this group will be the ones bearing the responsibility to keep us all in work. Their reaction not only matters, but that they chose to stand together (or rather sit together, in the comfy environs of Gloucester Rugby’s 1873 restaurant and conferencing hall) to hear the news we think speaks volumes too. We’ve used the word ‘together’ quite a lot in this. We think that’s what Gloucestershire seems to do very well; stick together and support one another.
Hats off to Randall & Payne for creating the time and space to fan the flames of community in this case.
Please do continue to bear us in mind for your stories and ideas. The best email currently is andrew.merrell@raikesjournal.co.uk. Or telephone 07956 926061.
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* Everything you read on Raikes is made possible by the generous support of our partners (we’ve already let you know about QuoLux and more partners will be revealed over the coming weeks) our founding members and our paid-up subscribers. A massive ‘thank you’ to all our other subscribers too. The support of all of you is invaluable! To find out about commercial opportunities visit our About page. To get in touch email andrew.merrell@raikesjournal.co.uk.
Our chosen charity (fundraiser): Gloucester Quays Rotary Club
At yesterday’s Randall & Payne and Rathbones Budget Live event Raikes was lucky enough to bump into Lee Summers (pictured above testing the stage at a recent comedy event), boss of Elmrep, experts in copiers, printers and scanners that celebrates 40 years this year. Summers is also a proud member of Gloucester Quays Rotary Club - which is dedicated to raising money for good causes, and having a good time doing in the process. Summers recently led on the group's comedy night at Walls Social Club, and when the laughing stopped there was tears - of joy. It raised £10,000 - for tic+ Teenage Crisis, Hollie Gazard Trust and Sunflower Suicide Support. Raikes understands special thanks should go to sponsors including Gensis Timber Engineering, Genesis Timber Engineering, APM Fire and Security Limited, WSP Solicitors, Colebridge Financial Services, Cass-Stephens Insurances Ltd, Gloucester Glass Ltd and Number 8 Scaffolding. Apparently, Gloucester Rugby legend Ben Morgan donated his original shirt and shorts from his 2013 Six Nationals game for England against Scotland. Plenty more activities afoot for this year! Find out more here.
Your Raikes’ briefing
From the ashes of the deal between owners Gloucester City Council and Cheltenham construction firm Dowdeswell to renovate and rebuild the former Fleece Hotel in Gloucester comes a new vision, The Phoenix Village. Just when all seemed lost and the decade-long search for a developer for the site would go on - and on - Cheltenham businessman Marksteen Adamson stepped forward with a new plan, and last night the council’s cabinet voted to give it a go. It is understood heads of terms will now be drawn up with the council helping to seek funding and move towards an eventual handover of the property – which also includes the multi-storey car park at the rear of the building. The project is to create a ‘village’ of businesses, workshops and accommodation to support and train young people who have fallen outside of mainstream education and training "a one-stop, full-service provision for young adults who have missed opportunities, fallen through the traditional educational gaps, ended up jobless and in the wrong crowd or struggled with addiction and homelessness”. We have a big interview with Adamson pending too!
In more great news for Gloucester, its culture trust has revealed today (Thursday March 7) it has won £500,000 from Arts Council England to deliver a three-year programme. The project, Together Gloucester, will also receive £450,000 from the city council and £550,000 from ‘partners’ to deliver a total package of £1.5 million. The Trust will work with communities to create a ‘new vision for culture’ in the city and engage new audiences with arts, heritage and placemaking. Residents will be invited to get involved with the Trust seeking diverse perspectives of what should be included. Raikes thinks is possibly the most exciting investment to take place in the city for some time - not a building, but stuff for people. Together Gloucester has been developed by Gloucester Culture Trust and partners Active Gloucestershire, Gloucester BID, Gloucester City Council, Gloucester Community Building Collective, Gloucestershire Gateway Trust, GUST, The Music Works, University of Gloucestershire, and Young Gloucestershire. We’ll be posting a full story on Raikes shortly.
Anyone looking for good economic news for Gloucestershire in yesterday’s Budget might have heard Chancellor Jeremy Hunt reveal that the Oldbury nuclear site, just across the border into South Gloucestershire, has been bought from Hitachi in a £160 million deal along with its Wylfa site in Wales. Hunt said: “We want nuclear to provide 25 per cent of UK electricity by 2050.” Tom Greatex, of the Nuclear Industry Association, called the news “a pivotal moment for the future of nuclear in the UK” and something that “should mark the development of new projects at these sites”. Oldbury, on the banks of the Severn Estuary, has been long championed by the Western Gateway economic development partnership as part of its vision for a Low Carbon Energy Park. Councillor Mark Hawthorne, leader of Gloucestershire County Council and vice-chairman of the Western Gateway, said: “Our vision is of a site which can help develop new skills and clean energy jobs powered by a boost of investment into our communities. Severn Edge is ready to be seen as a world leader in new SMR (small modular reactors) technology.” Horizon Nuclear Power, Hitachi’s Gloucester-based operation, was ready to develop both sites, but withdrew in 2020 with the loss of 400 jobs after failing to come to an agreement with the Government over funding.
Budget 2024: If there was onestand out positive, it was this...
Every Budget is followed by experts trying to identify the pluses. If they wanted to save time they could have come to Gloucester Rugby’s Kingsholm stadium and seen a major positive, and one of the strengths of Gloucestershire.
By Andrew Merrell
No Budget ever meant anything without factoring in one thing – the people it impacts. How those people receive the Budget, how they react, who they have around them when they both hear the news and begin the work out the consequences can speak volumes about a community.
“You always know how to put on a good do,” was how one businessman said his goodbyes to Tim Watkins, managing partner of Randall & Payne, as he left Gloucester Rugby’s Kingsholm stadium yesterday after the firm’s Budget Live event.
You might have thought it was the end of an awards ceremony. Close to 100 guests gathered at the invitation of Randall & Payne and its partners Rathbones, to watch the Chancellor deliver his statement, and then discuss.
This was the return of the accountant and business advisor’s once annual Budget gathering, relaunched for the first-time post Covid-19 pandemic, and this year in partnership with the wealth management firm.
There was networking, lunch, and then it was eyes front to hear the Chancellor’s words while Tristan George, head of Rathbone’s Cheltenham office, and Randall & Payne’s Rob Case, James Geary, and Will Abbott, soaked up the detail ready to deliver their verdict and field any questions in a post-Budget Q&A.
For Rathbones, this was also chance to explain its presence in the county – the result of its takeover of Investec last year, giving it ownership of a Cheltenham office (its 23rd UK-wide), taking staff numbers to 3,500, 363 investment managers and funds under management of £105 billion.
For Randall & Payne, long established in the county, this was about reminding everyone that they are all part of a strong business community in Gloucestershire, helping reinforce those connections, reminding everyone of the support they have around them, and about trying and have a bit of fun together along the way. Even if there is no escaping the backdrop.
Abbott said: “The country is facing some challenges and the way we face these is by growing the economy. The way we do that is by getting businesses to grow – and making it easier for businesspeople to grow their business. We also have the challenge of getting our public services to work.
“Our job is to help businesspeople do that. That is why we are bringing people together, to see how we can help them.”
Rob Case said: “This is the first time we have done this since Covid. I think it’s the only event like this in the county. It’s important to open that door again and to be here, important to be here together, and to show our support.”
Chris Wills, a partner and corporate and commercial specialist from Willans solicitors, there as one of the guests, said: “At the end of the day, people like doing business with people they like doing business with.
“Bringing together people like this is helping facilitate and strengthen those ties and reminded people that despite the national media’s doom and gloom, on the business side of things at least, Gloucestershire is thriving.”
Post Budget the panel of Case, George and Geary tried to pull the positives and pertinent points from Hunt's fast-moving conveyor belt of statements, statistics, promises and political messages, prompted by Abbott, who chaired proceedings.
“I don’t know whether anyone else picked up on the idea that the Conservatives were the party of low tax and spending on public services, and labour the party of high tax,” said Abbott, joking about a speech in which Hunt seemed to use that very statement to punctuate every other sentence.
According to the Chancellor it was a Budget that would “unleash people power that would put the country back on the path to growth”.
As was noted post Budget, the overall level of taxation in 2023 was the highest for 70 years and it is forecast to rise further. The Office for Budget responsibility predicts the Government will collect 37.1 pence of every pound generated in the economy in 2028-2029.
The panel addressing guests in the 1873 Captain’s Lounge at Kingsholm were not quite as enthusiastic about what was said as the man with the red briefcase at the Despatch Box in Parliament.
“I wanted to be surprised, I didn’t think I would be and wasn’t really,” was George’s initial reaction, adding: “He (Hunt) is trying to lose an election less badly.”
Not that George was unsympathetic to the Chancellor’s predicament.
“I think what we saw overall was the long echo of what happened as a result of the Kwasi Kwarteng Budget, which made uncosted pledges and expected investors to pay for them.
“Jeremy Hunt’s hands were tied behind his back since and he has probably gone as far as he can today, but it is disappointing that we have got to this point that to be really radical and to be pro-business is so hard to do.”
Points of interest for the panel included purchase of Oldbury in South Gloucestershire from Hitachi (see the story above), the reduction in VAT cut and the impact that might have (“pretty inconsequential”, according to Case), a new ISA (“good news” according to George, on the face of it - as it encouraged investment in the UK – if not massively impactful), the announcement on pensions and the British Savings Bond “sounded good” (said George) but needed further investigation, the bigger statements of a £650 million investment by AstraZeneca in a new factory (albeit near Liverpool, were ‘pretty positive statements’), and the furnished holiday lets scheme being scrapped was also ‘interesting’, with news the Government would be selling its shares in NatWest welcomed.
Scrapping the furnished holiday lets scheme – an attempt to move homes from the holiday rental market to the rental market - was expected to raise £300 million a year for the Treasury, said Hunt.
VAT registration threshold would be increased from £85,000 to £90,000 from the start of April.
The new tax-free Individual Savings Account will aim to direct money to British businesses, with savers allowed to deposit £5,000 a year on top of the existing ISA allowance of £20,000. No start date was announced.
National Insurance contribution rate was cut by two pence in the pound, and follows a two pence cut in the autumn from 12 per cent to 10 per cent. Hunt said this would save someone earning £35,000 a year £450.
The new British Savings Bond will be available through National Savings and Investments (NS&I) from April with the account offering a fixed rate of interest on savings for three years.
From April 2026 there was a consolidation of child benefit rules to apply to collective household incomes rather than for individuals.
Rates paid to nurseries to fund free childcare for parents of children aged more than nine months old will continue for two years – a move Hunt said would encourage 60,000 more parents to enter work.
The higher rate of capital gains tax, the tax on the sale of property, would be reduced from 28 per cent to 24 per cent.
Geary (pictured above), who leads Randall & Payne’s corporate tax team, summed it up with - “as regards important tax changes for businesses” there was “not a lot really”, caveating that with “there will be a suite of documents” appearing on the Government website to compliment the Budget and the team at Randall & Payne would be digesting those and releasing their findings over the next few days. The firm has already started releasing its reaction to these in bite-sized chunks on social media (LinkedIn and Twitter).
“Capital gains tax was a big surprise,” said Geary, before adding, jokingly: “It is like there is an election in the next few months!”
Concerns voiced from the floor of the event included the future of the NHS; there was a collective shudder of fear at the prospect of another project to digitise the national health service – especially while the fall-out from the Post Office debacle still unresolved - and disappointment about a lack of announcements on funding for school. Some in the room who are governors at county schools and colleges said there was the real prospect of shedding much-needed staff to make ends meet.
And there was a question over whether Hunt’s promise that the Budget would encourage thousands to return to work would deliver the right staff to fill the vacant positions.
All of which seemed to rather underline the point we raised at the start of the article about the point of the gathering – that is was about community, about standing together, about realising you don’t have to cope entirely on your own, trying to understand one another better, and being there to help everyone succeed. No matter what.
Oh, and did we mentioned it was fun too!
* Everything you read on Raikes is made possible by the generous support of our partners (we’ve already let you know about QuoLux and more will be revealed over the coming weeks) our founding members and our paid-up subscribers. A massive ‘thank you’ to all our other subscribers too. The support of all of you is invaluable!
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