The Chancellor Jeremy Hunt has today delivered the sprint budget commending his budget to the house after speaking for an hour before Parliament this afternoon.
Some of the key items in what the Chancellor called a Growth Budget that will impact households and business in Penrith and across the UK are:
Government subsidies for household energy bills to subsidies limiting typical household energy bills to £2,500 a year extended for three months, until the end of June.
£200m to bring energy charges for prepayment meters in line with prices for customers paying by direct debit expected to help 4m households across the country.
30 hours of free childcare for working parents in England expanded to cover one and two-year-olds to help more people return to work.
Families on universal credit will receive childcare support up front instead of in arrears with the £646 per month per child cap raised to £951
£600 incentive payments for those becoming childminders, and relaxed rules in England to let childminders look after more children rising from 1 childminder per 4 children to 1 in 5.
Cap on amount workers can accumulate in pensions savings over their lifetime before having to pay extra tax that is currently set at £1.07m to be abolished.
Tax-free yearly pension allowance pot to rise from £40,000 to £60,000.
Fuel duty frozen with the 5p cut to fuel duty on petrol and diesel that was due to end in April will now remain in place for another year expected to save the average motorist £100 over the year.
Alcohol taxes to rise in line with inflation from August but with new reliefs announced for draught beers sold in pubs will see the duty charged across the UK cut by 11p in August.
Tax on tobacco to increase by 2% above inflation, and 6% above inflation for hand-rolling tobacco.
The Chancellor has also announced the government will give councils £500m to fix potholes and that £63m will be given to help leisure centres with rising swimming pool heating costs, and invest to become more energy efficient.
The Chancellor billed the budget as a Growth Budget setting out a range of measures to help business education communities and education including the announcement of 12 investment zones to “drive business investment and level up” the country.
Although none of the 12 areas include Penrith or any part of Cumbria.
Despite the Chancellors term of a Growth Budget the Federation of Small Business has said the budget “A distinct lack of support in this Budget proves small firms are overlooked and undervalued. 5.5 million small businesses and 16 million people who work for them will be wondering why this choice has been made”.
“We’ve got a Budget that on energy helps households but not small firms. On business taxes, it spends £27bn extra on big businesses, arguing that small businesses are already catered for. This will leave to a feeling of being left behind instead of being considered equal partners in economic recovery - trickledown economics here simply does not work.”
The Budget also set out plans that will effectively be abolished within a year, Local Enterprise Partnerships ‘LEPs’ including Cumbria Lep.
As part of measures designed to encourage an ‘enterprise economy,’ Mr Hunt set out in his speech plans to transfer the responsibilities of LEPs to local authorities by April 2024.
According to Government documents published today all support from the Government will end within 12 months with LEP functions delivered by local government in the future.
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