News

UK consumers are buying two thirds less veg than the amount recommended by health experts. According to Government guidance on a healthy diet, 20% of our shopping should be made up of vegetables, but in reality we only reach 7.2%. Figures from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation show that as many as 20,000 premature deaths annually in the UK could be avoided if we all ate more veg.

Visa is introducing a Zero Floor Limit for all contactless transactions to help protect cardholders against fraud.

A Floor Limit refers to the maximum amount a merchant can charge to a cardholder without getting authorisation from the card issuer. The ‘Zero Floor Limit’ means that every card transaction will now need to be authorised online by the card issuer.

Thousands of businesses are still waiting for small business rate relief after the process that councils go through to issue new bills has been subject to months of delay.

Local Government Minister Marcus Jones has set a deadline of 21 August for the software providers to local councils to provide updates so that new bills can be issued to businesses that are due relief.

A cross party group of MPs and Lords have called on the Government to introduce the provisions of the Clean Air Bill tabled by Labour MP Geraint Davies.

The letter, signed by 119 parliamentarians, follows the publication of the Government’s Air Quality Plan which aims to ban the sale of new petrol and diesel cars by 2040 in favour of a wider electric vehicle infrastructure.

Provisions in the Clear Air Bill, which aim to go further than the Air Quality Plan, include:

HM Treasury have announced that there are now more new £1 coins in circulation than old round pounds.

Convenience stores in a number of pilot towns are being given the opportunity to take part in a scheme set up by Gloucestershire Local Enterprise Partnership, working with the government’s Future High Streets Forum, to help retailers work together to promote their towns online.  The pilot is using the #WDYT hashtag to generate conversations among customers in Gloucester, Stroud and Cheltenham, with the pilot now being extended to Leamington Spa, Stafford and a number of other towns that are preparing to launch.

According to reports from the Office of National Statistics (ONS), crime in England and Wales has seen its largest annual increase in a decade.

Figures from ONS have shown that a total of around five million crimes were reported to and recorded by the police last year, this is a ten per cent rise from the previous year. These crimes include a range of offences such as burglary, theft and violent crimes.

Key points from the report include:

Bank of England Governor Mark Carney has unveiled the design of the new £10 note. The note is printed on polymer and is the first Bank of England banknote with a tactile feature to help blind and partially sighted users.

The £10 note contains sophisticated security features which make it very difficult to counterfeit. It is expected to last at least 2.5 times longer than the current paper £10 notes – around 5 years in total – and stay in better condition during day to day use.

ACS (the Association of Convenience Stores) has responded to the publication of the Government’s new Tobacco Strategy, calling for more powers to tackle the illicit trade locally in addition to the national measures set out in the document.

The Strategy commits to the following measures at a national level:

Mel Stride MP, Financial Secretary to Treasury has confirmed today that the Government will delay plans for the roll out of their Making Tax Digital tax reforms by one year to 2019.

Under the new timetable: