Business

Rachel Reeves has tightened the squeeze on renewable energy generators, raising the windfall tax on wind and solar producers from 45 per cent to 55 per cent in a move the Chancellor insists will stop the sector “cashing in” on the latest Middle East oil and gas shock.

The increase to the electricity generators levy (EGL), announced on Tuesday, has been timed to land alongside a sweeping set of power market reforms from Ed Miliband, the Energy Secretary, designed to “break the link” between volatile gas prices and the cost of electricity paid by households and businesses.

For Britain’s small and medium-sized employers, still nursing the scars of the 2022 energy crisis, the stakes could scarcely be higher. Industry figures, however, have been quick to brand the package a “sham”, warning it risks locking consumers and businesses into higher bills for decades and chilling the investment climate for renewables just as ministers are trying to court record capital inflows.

Under the existing system, many wind and solar farms still sell power on the wholesale market while drawing a top-up subsidy through the legacy renewables obligation (RO) scheme. The Treasury’s new design offers a carrot alongside the stick: generators who voluntarily switch to fixed-price contracts for difference (CfDs) will be exempt from the higher levy.

Ministers argue this will decouple renewables revenues from wholesale electricity prices, which are still set by the most expensive marginal plant on the system — almost invariably gas. Under the current merit-order pricing, even when the vast majority of power is coming from wind or solar, all generators are paid the gas-set price whenever a gas plant is called on.

“Hardworking British families and businesses should not bear the brunt of global gas price shocks while electricity generators are making exceptional profits,” Ms Reeves said. She added that moving generators onto CfDs, combined with the 55 per cent levy, would “offer households and businesses stronger protection against future energy shocks”.

But the numbers lay bare why the voluntary switch may prove a hard sell. An RO certificate is currently worth £69.34. An onshore wind farm under the RO receives one certificate per megawatt hour (MWh) generated, on top of the wholesale price. At 5pm on Monday, with wholesale prices at £99 per MWh, that produced a total return of £168.43 per MWh. Offshore wind, which earns up to 1.9 certificates per MWh, could have banked as much as £230.75 per MWh at the same moment.

One senior energy industry source warned that handing such generators fresh 20-year CfDs on top of their existing RO entitlements amounted to a “double subsidy”, and could keep consumer bills elevated well beyond the RO’s planned 2027-to-2037 phase-out.

Dale Vince, the green energy entrepreneur and Labour donor, went further. “The Government are not breaking the link. I’m very disappointed with that,” he said. “Something real has to be done because we’re in the second energy crisis of this decade.”

Kathryn Porter, the independent energy analyst, cautioned that the levy could also hasten the retirement of Britain’s ageing nuclear fleet, which falls within the windfall tax’s scope. “The whole thing is a mess. This entire plan might end up smoothing costs at a higher level than they are now,” she said.

Tara Singh, chief executive of RenewableUK, struck a more diplomatic note, saying the industry supported weakening the gas-electricity link and would “work constructively” with officials. But she warned that investor confidence was on the line. “At a time when ministers are hoping to attract record levels of investment into renewables, uncertainty over changes to taxation needs to be clarified immediately so it does not drive up the cost of investment.”

Ministers also signalled they would tackle the rising sums paid to wind farms to switch off when grid capacity is constrained, a cost ultimately borne by bill-payers, including the nation’s 5.5 million SMEs.

For Mr Miliband, the wider message is a political one. “As we face the second fossil fuel shock in less than five years, the lesson for our country is clear,” he said. “The era of fossil fuel security is over, and the era of clean energy security must come of age.”

The Government will now consult on the detail of the market overhaul. For British business owners watching their energy bills with nervous eyes, the question is no longer whether reform is needed, but whether Ms Reeves and Mr Miliband have hit on the right formula, or merely swapped one distortion for another.

Read more:
Reeves tightens windfall tax on renewables as ministers move to sever gas-electricity link

Barclays has been ushered into the second cohort of firms handpicked by the City watchdog for its artificial intelligence live testing scheme, as Britain’s banking establishment doubles down on the technology race reshaping financial services.

The FTSE 100 lender will rub shoulders with its high street rival Lloyds Banking Group, which is entering the programme through its Scottish Widows subsidiary, alongside credit reference agency Experian, payments outfit GoCardless and Swiss banking giant UBS.

Run by the Financial Conduct Authority in partnership with Advai, the British specialist in automated testing, evaluation and assurance of AI systems, the initiative offers successful applicants a regulatory safe harbour in which to put their models through their paces. The intention is to let firms iron out governance wrinkles well before those systems are turned loose on high-stakes decisions affecting consumers.

Speaking at Innovate Finance’s Global Fintech Summit, Jessica Rusu, the FCA’s chief data, information and intelligence officer, said the scheme “reflects our commitment to supporting the pace of change in AI, whilst demonstrating how regulators and industry can work together to harness innovation responsibly”.

The announcement lands at a moment when Britain’s traditional lenders are under acute pressure to demonstrate tech credentials that can stand comparison with the tech-native neobanks snapping at their heels. Investors have grown increasingly impatient for a convincing AI narrative, particularly one that sets out concrete implications for costs and headcount.

UBS analysts warned earlier this year that banks would be “pressed hard” to articulate a “coherent financial story for AI implementation: what is being spent now and what it means for the future shape of expenses overall and headcount in particular”.

The urgency is reflected in the flurry of alliances struck in recent months. Barclays has thrown in its lot with Microsoft AI in a deal that will put AI tools in the hands of some 100,000 of its bankers, while NatWest has signed with OpenAI and HSBC has turned to the French champion Mistral. NatWest, Lloyds and HSBC each sit within the top 20 of the Evident AI index, the global benchmark for AI adoption in banking.

Yet for all the enthusiasm, the risks have not gone unnoticed. American regulators recently summoned Wall Street chief executives to an emergency meeting amid concerns that Anthropic’s newly released “Mythos” tool could pose systemic risks to the financial system, a reminder that the cybersecurity implications of ever more capable models remain a live worry for supervisors on both sides of the Atlantic.

The FCA launched its first AI live testing cohort last December, with Monzo, NatWest and Santander among the inaugural participants. For smaller and mid-market firms watching from the sidelines, the expanding programme offers a useful weathervane on where the regulator will draw its lines as AI embeds itself deeper into British finance.

Read more:
Barclays and Lloyds join FCA’s second AI sandbox as banks race to prove their tech credentials

Jeff Bezos is on the cusp of sealing one of the most eye-watering early-stage fundraisings the artificial intelligence sector has yet produced, with his nascent physical AI laboratory, Project Prometheus, reportedly closing in on a $10bn (£7.9bn) round that would value the venture at $38bn.

The Financial Times, citing people familiar with the matter, reported on Monday that BlackRock and JPMorgan are among the institutional heavyweights that have signed up to the round, though the transaction has yet to be finalised. BlackRock declined to comment. The fundraising, if completed at the mooted terms, would place Prometheus among the most richly valued early-stage AI businesses on the planet, less than six months after it emerged from stealth.

Launched quietly in November 2025 with $6.2bn of initial backing, Prometheus is chasing a very different thesis to the generative AI giants that have dominated the investment cycle since ChatGPT arrived in late 2022. Rather than training ever-larger language models on the internet’s text and imagery, it is building systems that can reason about the physical world itself, materials, tolerances, processes and the immutable laws of physics. The stated target markets are engineering, manufacturing, aerospace, robotics, drug discovery and logistics automation, sectors where large language models have, so far, made only glancing contact.

Running the show on a day-to-day basis is chief executive Vikram Bajaj, a former Google X scientist and co-founder of Foresite Labs. The lab has swelled to more than 120 staff, poached from the likes of OpenAI, xAI, Meta and DeepMind. Bezos, described as one of the initial backers, has been leading the fundraising alongside Bajaj, and, notably, has taken an operational role in the business. It is the first time the Amazon founder has rolled up his sleeves at a technology company since stepping down from the chief executive’s chair at the group he built in 2021.

The timing is striking. Prometheus’s raise is landing only days after Amazon itself committed up to $25bn of fresh investment in Anthropic, securing in return a $100bn cloud-spending pledge from the Claude-maker, a transaction that underlined quite how dramatically the scale of AI infrastructure deals has shifted. A $10bn round for a six-month-old laboratory would, for perspective, exceed the lifetime fundraising of most AI companies in existence.

Why are institutions the size of BlackRock and JPMorgan prepared to write cheques of that magnitude into an unproven venture? The answer lies in the peculiar economics of physical AI. Unlike the vast quantities of cheap, publicly available text and code that power today’s language models, the data needed to teach a machine how steel fatigues, how a drug molecule binds or how a robotic arm should pick a part is proprietary, scarce and devilishly expensive to gather at scale. That scarcity is itself a moat, and accumulating it early may confer a durable advantage on whichever laboratories manage it first.

For Britain’s small and mid-sized manufacturers, aerospace suppliers and life sciences specialists, many of whom already sit on decades of unique operational data, the emergence of a well-capitalised Bezos-backed laboratory is a development worth watching. If Prometheus delivers on its ambitions, the model for applying AI to the industrial economy will not be built on the back of scraped web pages but on partnerships with the firms that actually make, mend and move things.

That, of course, is a sizeable “if”. Prometheus has yet to publicly demonstrate a product, let alone a commercial deployment, and the lab remains firmly in its early phase. Plenty of sceptics will also point out that the broader AI market is wearing increasingly frothy valuations. Peter Fedoročko, chief technology officer at analytics firm GoodData, takes a measured view. “Yes, AI has a bubble, but the technology is real,” he argues. “When dot-com crashed, the internet didn’t disappear, it became infrastructure. The same thing happens here. The dot-com crash took a decade to recover financially, but the internet reshaped everything during that time. It didn’t wipe out jobs; it transformed them. AI follows the same pattern. Once the hype burns off, the real builders get back to work.”

For Bezos, the calculation is simpler. Having built the world’s largest logistics and cloud empire on the back of an earlier technological wave, he is now betting, in person and in size, that the next one will be written not in pixels and prose, but in physics.

Read more:
Bezos’s physical AI lab Prometheus nears $10bn raise at $38bn valuation

The unexpected drop in Britain’s unemployment rate to 4.9 per cent has been seized upon by Number 11 as evidence that the economy entered the spring on a firm footing. Business owners reading the small print of Tuesday’s labour market figures, however, will find precious little to celebrate.

Headline jobless figures from the Office for National Statistics showed the rate falling from 5.2 per cent in the previous quarter to 4.9 per cent in the three months to February, comfortably ahead of City forecasts. Yet the improvement owes rather more to a statistical sleight of hand than to any underlying strength in hiring, with vacancies sliding to a near five-year low of 711,000 and payrolled employment shedding 11,000 workers in March alone.

For Britain’s small and medium-sized enterprises, the data lays bare the cumulative toll of last autumn’s £25 billion increase in employer national insurance contributions. Since chancellor Rachel Reeves unveiled the rise in October 2024, payrolled employment has contracted by 143,000, a figure that masks the disproportionate burden borne by smaller firms with thinner margins to absorb wage costs and a slimmer cushion against rising payroll taxes.

Wage growth has now slowed to its weakest pace since the depths of the pandemic. Regular pay rose by 3.6 per cent in the three months to February, down from 3.8 per cent, while private sector pay growth of 3.2 per cent, the lowest reading since October 2020, sits in stark contrast to the 5.2 per cent enjoyed by public sector workers. For owner-managers across hospitality, retail and professional services, the squeeze on private pay is the clearest signal yet that hiring confidence has drained from the system.

The figures predate the outbreak of the US-Israeli war with Iran in late February, leaving the headline numbers looking distinctly stale. Ashley Webb, senior UK economist at Capital Economics, said the latest payroll and vacancy data offered “the first signs that the rise in energy prices due to the Iran war is weighing on businesses’ hiring plans and that is feeding through into a further softening in pay growth”.

The International Monetary Fund has warned that the United Kingdom will be the hardest hit of any G7 economy by the conflict, owing to its outsized exposure to international gas prices. Inflation figures due on Wednesday are expected to show the headline rate climbing to 3.3 per cent in March, up from 3 per cent in February, a development that will make the cost-of-doing-business equation still more uncomfortable for the country’s 5.5 million SMEs.

A closer reading of the ONS release reveals less flattering currents. Economic inactivity, those of working age who are neither in work nor actively seeking it, rose to 21 per cent from 20.7 per cent, with an additional 116,000 people dropping out of the labour market altogether. Liz McKeown, the ONS director of economic statistics, attributed the shift largely to “fewer students seeking work alongside their studies”.

Strip out that statistical quirk and the picture darkens considerably. The number of unemployed working-age people fell by 88,000, but employment among those aged 16 to 64 actually slipped by 5,000. A 17,000 net rise in employment among those aged 16 and over suggests that it was older workers, rather than those of conventional working age, who picked up what jobs were going. In short, the labour market is shrinking at the edges while the headline rate flatters its health.

For SME owners weighing recruitment plans against rising input costs, the silver lining lies in Threadneedle Street. With the Bank of England’s monetary policy committee due to meet next Thursday, the slackening labour market may tilt the balance towards holding the base rate at 3.75 per cent, or even cutting it later this year, rather than tightening to combat the Iran-driven energy spike. Cheaper credit cannot offset a tax rise or a vanished customer, but for businesses servicing variable-rate debt it would at least provide some relief.

Whether that proves cold comfort depends largely on how long the Gulf disruption persists. For now, the headline jobs number flatters a labour market that, on closer inspection, is creaking, and the small business community knows it.

Read more:
Unemployment dip flatters to deceive as SME hiring freezes amid Iran shock

Baroness Karren Brady has stepped down as vice-chair of West Ham United, drawing the curtain on one of British football’s most enduring executive careers and severing a commercial partnership with joint-chair David Sullivan that has spanned close to four decades.

The 57-year-old peer, broadcaster and businesswoman had served on the Hammers’ board for 16 years. Her exit arrives at a delicate juncture for the Premier League club, where supporter discontent with the boardroom has hardened into a regular feature of matchdays. Chants directed at the ownership rang out again on Sunday evening during the side’s draw at Crystal Palace, the latest in a string of organised protests that have overshadowed a season spent flirting with the relegation places.

For those who have followed Brady’s career since the early 1990s, the decision marks the end of an era. It was Brady, then just 23, who convinced Sullivan to acquire Birmingham City in 1993, taking the managing director’s chair herself and becoming one of the youngest executives to run a professional football club anywhere in Europe. That appointment laid the foundations for a business relationship that has outlasted most in British sport.

In a statement released by the club, Brady said: “It has been a privilege to work alongside the board, management, players, staff and supporters at West Ham United. Together we have achieved remarkable milestones, but the highlight for me will always be lifting the Uefa Europa Conference League trophy, a moment that will stay with me forever. I am deeply grateful for the relationships, challenges and opportunities that have shaped my time at the club.”

She added: “While this chapter closes, my passion for football and commitment to supporting the next generation of leaders remains undiminished. I wish West Ham United every success for the future and look forward to following their continued achievements with pride.”

Brady has drawn heavy criticism from the stands alongside Sullivan this season, with the pair cast by sections of the fanbase as the architects of a prolonged period of under-investment on the pitch. The Hammers currently sit a single place and two points clear of the drop, steadied by the recent appointment of Nuno Espirito Santo as head coach.

A long-serving columnist for The Sun and aide to Lord Sugar on the BBC’s The Apprentice, Brady is understood to be redirecting her attention toward her broader portfolio of business interests and her duties in the House of Lords, while retaining her place in the boardroom of the hit entertainment format.

Her tenure at West Ham will be remembered as much for corporate manoeuvring as for sporting achievement. She was widely regarded as the driving force behind the club’s contentious relocation from Upton Park to the London Stadium in the wake of the 2012 Olympics, a deal that has divided opinion but radically rewired the Hammers’ commercial footprint.

Sullivan paid tribute to his long-time lieutenant, saying: “Karren has been an exceptional leader and a key figure in the club’s development over the years. We wish her every success in her future endeavours and thank her for her outstanding contribution over the past 16 years.”

Joint-chair Daniel Kretinsky, who joined the ownership group in 2021, was similarly effusive. “I want to thank Karren most sincerely for our collaboration since 2021, and for all the work she has done in the past for the club,” he said. “Her contribution to West Ham United’s growth, such as the long-term contract for the London Stadium, shareholders transition and the British record transfer of Declan Rice, has been absolutely essential and not always fully appreciated. Karren is also very highly appreciated in the Premier League leadership community and was an excellent representative of our club there. I wish her the best of luck in all future activities.”

Brady’s departure leaves a sizeable gap at the top of the club, both in terms of institutional memory and Premier League influence. For Sullivan and Kretinsky, the challenge now is twofold: to steady a restive fanbase and to recruit a successor capable of matching her standing in the game’s corridors of power. West Ham United has been contacted for further comment.

Read more:
Brady bows out: West Ham vice-chair ends 16-year tenure as boardroom pressure mounts

After 15 transformative years at the helm of the world’s most valuable company, Tim Cook is stepping aside as chief executive of Apple, with hardware engineering chief John Ternus set to inherit one of the most coveted seats in global business.

The Cupertino-based group confirmed on Monday that Cook, 65, will become executive chairman of the board on 1 September, with Ternus, senior vice president of hardware engineering, promoted to chief executive on the same date. The succession, approved unanimously by directors, caps what insiders describe as a patient, long-planned handover rather than a hurried passing of the baton.

Cook will remain chief executive through the summer, working alongside his successor to ensure a seamless transition. In his new chairman’s role, he is expected to focus on global policy engagement, a brief that has grown increasingly weighty as Apple navigates tariff regimes, artificial intelligence regulation and geopolitical pressure on its supply chain.

“It has been the greatest privilege of my life to be the CEO of Apple,” Cook said in a statement. “John Ternus has the mind of an engineer, the soul of an innovator, and the heart to lead with integrity and with honour. He is without question the right person to lead Apple into the future.”

The numbers behind Cook’s tenure make for arresting reading. Since succeeding the late Steve Jobs in 2011, Apple’s market capitalisation has swelled from roughly $350bn to $4tn, a gain of more than 1,000 per cent. Annual revenue has almost quadrupled, climbing from $108bn in the 2011 financial year to more than $416bn in 2025. Cook has added Apple Watch, AirPods and Vision Pro to the firm’s hardware roster, while the Services division he championed now generates more than $100bn a year,  a standalone business that would rank inside the Fortune 40.

For British SMEs that built livelihoods around Apple’s ecosystem, from App Store developers in Shoreditch to hardware resellers on the high street, Cook’s legacy has been the steady expansion of a platform that now reaches 2.5 billion active devices across more than 200 countries. Apple’s global retail footprint has more than doubled during his reign.

Ternus, who has spent almost a quarter of a century at the company, represents a return to the engineer-led tradition established by Jobs. He joined Apple’s product design team in 2001, rose to vice president of hardware engineering in 2013 and entered the executive suite in 2021. His fingerprints are on every major product line, from iPad and AirPods to the recent MacBook Neo and the iPhone 17 range, including the ultra-slim iPhone Air that launched last autumn.

“I am profoundly grateful for this opportunity to carry Apple’s mission forward,” Ternus said. “Having spent almost my entire career at Apple, I have been lucky to have worked under Steve Jobs and to have had Tim Cook as my mentor.”

A Mechanical Engineering graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, Ternus cut his teeth at Virtual Research Systems before joining Apple. He has overseen the transition to Apple-designed silicon, the push into recycled aluminium and 3D-printed titanium, and the evolution of AirPods into an over-the-counter hearing aid, a rare example of Big Tech hardware being cleared as a bona fide medical device.

In a further reshuffle, Arthur Levinson, Apple’s non-executive chairman for the past 15 years, will step back to become lead independent director when the new regime takes effect. Ternus will join the board the same day.

“Tim’s unprecedented and outstanding leadership has transformed Apple into the world’s best company,” said Levinson. “We believe John is the best possible leader to succeed Tim.”

Cook’s departure from the chief executive’s office closes a chapter defined as much by stewardship as by showmanship. Where Jobs dazzled, Cook disciplined — turning a maverick product house into an operational juggernaut, reducing Apple’s carbon footprint by more than 60 per cent against 2015 levels even as revenue roughly doubled, and placing privacy at the heart of the brand proposition. Whether Ternus can continue that trajectory while reigniting the pace of hardware breakthrough will define the next era in Cupertino, and reverberate through every business, large and small, that lives within Apple’s orbit.

Read more:
Cook hands Apple’s reins to Ternus as engineering chief prepares for top job

The Gaydon-based luxury marque is pressing ahead with trademark action against the Chinese conglomerate that owns a sizeable slice of its share register, in a dispute that underscores the delicate politics of cross-border automotive investment.

Aston Martin Lagonda has launched legal proceedings against Zhejiang Geely Holding Group, the Hangzhou-headquartered motor group that holds a 17 per cent stake in the British carmaker, over a winged emblem the luxury marque claims is too close for comfort to its own storied badge.

The case, which pits Britain’s most famous sports car manufacturer against one of its largest shareholders, centres on a logo Geely intends to roll out on vehicles produced by its London EV Company (LEVC) subsidiary, the Coventry-based maker of the capital’s black cabs. The design features a horse’s head set within a pair of outstretched wings, and Aston Martin contends that the overall impression sails far too close to the slender winged motif that has adorned its bonnets since 1927.

The row is not a new one, Aston Martin first raised objections in 2022, when Geely sought to register the marks with the UK Intellectual Property Office. The Gaydon firm formally opposed the application the following year, arguing infringement, only for the hearing officer to side with the Chinese group on the basis that consumers were unlikely to mistake an electric taxi for a £150,000-plus grand tourer.

LEVC logo

That ruling did little to cool tempers at Aston Martin, and the latest legal salvo suggests the board is prepared to press the point despite the awkward shareholder dynamic. Geely acquired its 17 per cent holding for roughly $310m (£245m) in 2023, making it one of the marque’s most significant backers alongside executive chairman Lawrence Stroll’s Yew Tree consortium and Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund.

For Geely, the London taxi business is a strategically important British asset. The group has been quietly assembling a portfolio of UK marques over the past decade, with Lotus now firmly in its stable alongside LEVC. Its involvement at Aston Martin was initially welcomed as a source of both capital and potential manufacturing expertise at a moment when the British firm has been burning through cash to fund its electrification programme.

The dispute also comes at a bruising time for Aston Martin’s brand stewardship. The company recently saw 007 defect to the silver screen behind the wheel of a BYD, a coup for the rival Chinese electric-vehicle maker and a blow to a marque whose cultural cachet has long been bound up with the James Bond franchise.

In public, both parties are playing down the significance of the row. Aston Martin has declined to comment further on live proceedings, while Geely has characterised the matter as a routine trademark dispute and insisted it remains committed to a professional working relationship with the Gaydon marque as both business partner and investor.

Trademark lawyers watching the case note that the outcome will hinge on whether the courts accept that the average buyer, whether of an Aston Martin DB12 or an LEVC electric cab, could be confused or whether Aston’s goodwill in the wings motif is being unfairly exploited. What is already clear is that having a Chinese partner on the share register is no guarantee of a quiet life in the intellectual property courts.

Read more:
Aston Martin takes its 17pc shareholder Geely to court over ‘copycat’ wings logo

London’s small and medium-sized businesses are bracing for a punishing week of disruption as London Underground drivers prepare to stage two 24-hour walkouts, in a dispute over working patterns that threatens to drain millions of pounds from the capital’s already fragile hospitality and night-time economy.

Members of the Rail, Maritime and Transport (RMT) union will down tools from midday on Tuesday 21 April and again from midday on Thursday 23 April, with Transport for London (TfL) warning operators and passengers to expect “significant disruption” across the entire network. A separate walkout by 150 Unite members working as bus station and network traffic controllers, running from 23 to 25 April, is set to compound the misery.

For business owners across the capital, the timing could scarcely be worse. Operators in hospitality, retail and leisure are already contending with a fresh wave of energy price rises, persistent wage pressures and jittery consumer confidence. The loss of reliable late-night transport, industry leaders warn, risks tipping vulnerable SMEs over the edge.

TfL has published a day-by-day forecast of likely disruption. Normal services are expected to run on Tuesday 21 April until mid-morning, with availability tapering off ahead of the midday walkout. Any trains still running will wind down early, and TfL is advising those who must travel to complete their journeys by 8pm.

On Wednesday 22 April, services will start later than usual, with no trains expected before 7.30am. Significant disruption is forecast across all lines until midday, with a gradual recovery throughout the afternoon and evening.

The pattern repeats on Thursday 23 April, with normal services until mid-morning and a 12pm walkout triggering severe disruption into the evening. Friday 24 April will again see no service before 7.30am and continuing disruption across the network.

Although a reduced timetable will operate on some routes, TfL has confirmed there will be no service at all on the Piccadilly and Circle lines, no trains on the Metropolitan line between Baker Street and Aldgate, and no service on the Central line between White City and Liverpool Street. Trains that do run are likely to be sporadic, overcrowded and unable to pick up every waiting passenger.

The Elizabeth line, DLR, London Overground and tram services will operate as normal.

Adding to the disruption, seven bus routes operated by Stagecoach from Bow Bus Garage in East London will be affected by a 24-hour walkout from 5am on Friday 25 April. Routes 8, 25, 205, 425, N8, N25 and N205 are all in scope, although TfL expects the 25 and 425 to maintain a near-normal service for most of the day. The N8 will run a reduced route between Hainault and Liverpool Street at its usual frequency, while the remaining routes are likely to be severely delayed or cancelled.

The dispute centres on TfL’s proposal to introduce a four-day working week for train operators. The union has branded the plan “fake”, arguing it would simply condense existing hours into fewer days without delivering genuine improvements.

The RMT initially suspended strike action last month after TfL management agreed to negotiate, but accused the operator of reneging at the weekend.

RMT general secretary Eddie Dempsey said the union had “approached negotiations with TfL in good faith throughout this entire process”, adding: “despite our best efforts, TfL seem unwilling to make any concessions in a bid to avert strike action. This is extremely disappointing and has baffled our negotiators. The approach of TfL is not one which leads to industrial peace and will infuriate our members who want to see a negotiated settlement to this avoidable dispute.”

Claire Mann, TfL’s chief operating officer, countered that the proposals were fair and flexible. “We have set out proposals to the RMT for a four-day working week. This allows us to offer train operators an additional day off, whilst at the same time bringing London Underground in line with the working patterns of other train operating companies, improving reliability and flexibility at no additional cost. The changes would be voluntary, there would be no reduction in contractual hours and those who wish to continue a five-day working week pattern would be able to do so.”

For Michael Kill, chief executive of the Night Time Industries Association (NTIA), the latest walkout is another hammer blow to a sector running on empty.

“As the sector faces a fresh surge in energy and operating costs, this new wave of strike action creates yet more uncertainty that businesses simply cannot absorb,” he said. “Margins are being squeezed from every direction, and confidence is increasingly fragile.”

Mr Kill questioned the wider purpose of the industrial action. “The ongoing disruption to transport services begs the question, who does this actually benefit? Because right now, it’s businesses, workers and the wider public who are paying the price for the reckless actions of the few.”

He warned that the knock-on effects go well beyond lost footfall. “Without reliable late-night transport, staff struggle to get to work, customers stay away, and businesses lose critical trade. Many venues are already under intense financial pressure, continued disruption only compounds that risk.”

While acknowledging workers’ right to withdraw their labour, Mr Kill called for an urgent return to the negotiating table. “We respect the right to strike, but this situation cannot continue. All parties must get round the table and find a resolution, because sustained uncertainty at a time like this will have serious, lasting consequences for London’s night-time economy.”

TfL is urging travellers to use its journey planner to map their routes in advance and to check the status of lines in real time via its live status page. For SMEs, the message from industry is simpler: brace for a difficult week, and start demanding that both sides find a settlement before the damage to the capital’s economy becomes permanent.

Read more:
Tube strike chaos piles fresh pressure on London’s beleaguered night-time economy

Britain’s small and medium-sized businesses have been dealt another blow at the till, with corporate lawyers, financial planners and founders rounding on what they describe as “a continual tax-grabbing assault on SMEs” that is quietly eroding the rewards of building a company in the United Kingdom.

From 6 April, Business Asset Disposal Relief (BADR), the regime formerly trading under the rather more flattering banner of Entrepreneurs’ Relief, climbed from 14 per cent to 18 per cent on the first £1m of qualifying gains. It is the latest step in a long retreat from the policy’s original settlement, when business owners paid just 10 per cent on lifetime gains of up to £10m. The rate has now risen by 80 per cent over the past decade, and by 28 per cent in this single adjustment alone.

For a generation of owner-managers who have spent the past twenty years pouring sweat and capital into their companies, the maths is becoming harder to swallow. And, in the words of one adviser, “if we’re wondering why there are so few homegrown UK success stories, this is part of the answer.”

Martin Rayner, director at Compton Financial Services, argues the latest move cannot be read in isolation. “BADR has now increased by 80 per cent over the past decade and by a further 28 per cent in this latest change alone, this is not a one-off adjustment, it’s an ever-increasing tax on entrepreneurial success,” he said.

“And this doesn’t exist in isolation. Employer NI increases and minimum wage rises, which ripple upward through salary structures, not just the lowest tier, are already squeezing owners before they even think about exit.”

Rayner is blunt about the wider implications. “SMEs represent 99.9 per cent of all UK businesses. They are the backbone of this economy and the starting point of every large company. The risks of starting and growing a business keep rising while the rewards keep shrinking.”

For Scott Gallacher, director of Leicester-based financial advisory firm Rowley Turton, the change has a tangible human cost, measured not in pounds, but in years.

“Changes such as the increase from 14 per cent to 18 per cent could mean some business owners having to work an extra year just to stand still,” he said. “When you add this to the earlier move away from 10 per cent, the cumulative impact becomes much more significant.”

On a £1m sale, the journey from 10 per cent to 18 per cent represents an additional £80,000 handed to the Treasury, “the equivalent of around two additional years of work for many, simply to end up in the same position,” Gallacher noted.

He cautioned against treating seven-figure exits as proof of extravagance: “While £1m may sound like a large number, in today’s terms it often represents a lifetime’s work rather than extraordinary wealth.”

Steven Mather, lawyer and director at Steven Mather Solicitor in Leicester, warned that the bite is sharper still on transactions above the £1m threshold.

“Three years ago, a sale at £5m would have cost £900,000 in tax. Now, the same sale costs £1.14m, almost an extra quarter of a million in tax. And for what? Nothing,” he said.

“A business owner who has worked really hard over the years, paying all the tax along the way, to get to the point of exiting and having to pay another shedload to the Government.”

For Mather, the contrast with the regime’s original architecture is stark. “When I first started, BADR was called Entrepreneurs’ Relief and was £10m at 10 per cent. That helped incentivise British entrepreneurs to build and grow in the UK. Now? Those people go and do it in the UAE where it’s all tax-free.”

Graham Nicoll, financial planner at NCL Wealth Partners, frames the change as a familiar Treasury technique dressed in new clothes.

“On paper, a 4 per cent increase may not look drastic, but in real terms for every £1m of sale proceeds it is an extra £40,000 going to HMRC, which is meaningful,” he said.

“The impact of this is the same as fiscal drag, in that reliefs are becoming less generous over time, rates are creeping up and lifetime limits have shrunk dramatically. Changes in tax impacts like these will influence business owners’ thinking about timing, succession planning, structure and much more.”

His starting point with clients, he says, is no longer about the deal but the destination. “What are you looking to achieve, what do you want life to look like after business and how much do you need to achieve this? Robust cash flow planning underpins effective exit planning conversations.”

For Colette Mason, author and AI consultant at London-based Clever Clogs AI, the contradiction at the heart of government policy is becoming impossible to ignore.

“Just last week, the Government launched the £500m Sovereign AI fund telling AI entrepreneurs to start, scale and stay in Britain. But why would you, if the exit is being taxed so punitively?” she asked.

“You can’t pour public money into helping founders build and then squeeze what they keep after years of grafting to make it work.”

Her conclusion is one increasingly heard in boardrooms and breakfast meetings from Shoreditch to Solihull: “At some point, people do the maths and build somewhere that lets them keep the reward, and that really isn’t Britain with the continual tax-grabbing assault on SMEs.”

For a Government that has staked much of its growth narrative on the dynamism of British entrepreneurs, the message coming back from those entrepreneurs is unambiguous. Build the company, take the risk, employ the staff, pay the tax, and then watch the reward shrink each April. It is, advisers warn, a model that flatters HMRC’s spreadsheet for now, but quietly empties the pipeline of the very success stories Britain says it wants to celebrate.

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BADR hike branded a ‘tax-grabbing assault’ as Britain’s founders eye the exit

Britain’s small and medium-sized businesses are bracing for one of the most punishing periods since the pandemic, as the fallout from the Middle East oil shock threatens to push the UK economy to the brink of a technical recession within weeks.

The Item Club, the influential economic forecasting group, now expects the UK to “flirt” with recession through the second and third quarters of the year, with GDP growth halving to just 0.7 per cent in 2026, down from 1.4 per cent last year. Growth in 2027 is pencilled in at a “still-below-par” 0.9 per cent, a grim backdrop for owner-managed businesses already contending with tighter margins and nervous customers.

The trigger is the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, the chokepoint through which roughly a fifth of the world’s oil passes. The International Energy Agency has described the disruption as the largest supply shock in the global oil market’s history. Shipping through the strait remained at a standstill on Sunday after Tehran reasserted control of the waterway, with Donald Trump and the Iranian regime accusing one another of breaching the ceasefire struck in the wake of February’s US-Israeli strikes.

The American president accused Iran of a “total violation” after reports of fire being directed at vessels near the strait, and repeated his threat to target Iranian bridges and power infrastructure unless Tehran accepts Washington’s terms. Brent crude fell roughly 9 per cent to below $90 a barrel on Friday after Iran signalled it would reopen the waterway, which has been effectively closed since the 28 February attacks.

For British SMEs, many of whom still carry the scars of the post-Ukraine energy crisis,  the implications are stark. Matt Swannell, chief economic adviser to the Item Club, said: “Consumers’ spending power will be squeezed, while more expensive financing arrangements and a less certain global economic backdrop will pour cold water on companies’ investment plans.”

The labour market is forecast to deliver the “biggest jolt” since the pandemic. The Item Club expects unemployment to climb to 5.8 per cent by the middle of next year, with an additional 250,000 people out of work as firms trim headcount. Joblessness is not expected to drift back down to 4.75 per cent until 2029. Swannell flagged a “worrying switch” in the make-up of unemployment, shifting away from new entrants joining the labour market and towards outright redundancies, a trend that tends to hit smaller employers hardest.

Inflation, meanwhile, is projected to run at close to double the Bank of England’s 2 per cent target by the year-end. Even so, the Item Club does not expect “a repeat of 2022”. A softer economy and weakening jobs market should make it harder for companies to pass cost increases through to customers “as aggressively” as they managed in the months following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

That subdued pass-through explains why the Bank is unlikely to reverse course on rates. The Monetary Policy Committee is judged to view current borrowing costs as already holding back activity and “leaning against inflation”, with the Item Club pencilling in two further cuts by the middle of next year, welcome news for SMEs weighing refinancing decisions.

Separate analysis from EY underlines just how heavily geopolitics is weighing on boardrooms. Of the 55 profit warnings issued by UK-listed businesses in the first quarter, 49 per cent cited policy change and geopolitical uncertainty as a leading driver, the highest proportion recorded for that cause in more than 25 years of the firm’s tracking. The FTSE travel and leisure sector, a bellwether for discretionary spending, notched up its joint-highest number of profit warnings in three and a half years.

The mood among consumers is similarly downbeat. The latest Deloitte tracker shows overall consumer confidence has slumped to its lowest level since 2023, falling 3 percentage points during the first quarter, the sharpest quarterly drop since early 2022. Five of the six confidence measures compiled from Deloitte’s survey of 3,200 UK consumers fell, with the steepest decline coming in sentiment around household disposable income. Discretionary spending tumbled 7 percentage points to its weakest reading since the start of 2023.

For Britain’s SME owners, the message from the data is unambiguous: the next two quarters will test cash flow, hiring plans and pricing power in ways not seen since the pandemic. Those who move early to shore up working capital, renegotiate energy contracts and diversify supply chains away from Gulf-dependent routes are likely to be the ones still standing when growth finally returns.

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Britain to ‘flirt’ with recession as iran oil shock rattles SMEs