Business

It has been reported that the average consumer spends roughly £40 to £70 a month on subscription services. Whether it’s Netflix, Spotify, or Hello Fresh, subscription costs can sometimes rise to £786 a year for the average person.

A large part of these huge costs may be due to the difficulty of cancelling a subscription. We’ve all been there. You try to cancel a subscription and have to go through 10 different stages to confirm that you want to proceed before you can finally complete the process.

Now, new laws are set to take place, which will make cancelling subscriptions far easier for customers. This aims to prevent “subscription traps” that keep people in long-term subscriptions, potentially saving consumers “around 400 million annually”.

This article will explore what exactly these new laws are and how they may affect companies that rely on subscription fees, such as streaming services.

What Are These New Laws?

The new laws are set to take place in the spring of 2027, which will enable people to cancel subscriptions in just one click, making it as easy as signing up in the first place. These companies will also have to be more upfront with their customers about when ‘trial periods end’, meaning that they don’t accidentally get rolled into a year-long expensive contract without them realising.

If a customer forgets to cancel their free trial before it turns into a full subscription, there will be a “14-day cooling-off period” where they can get a full or partial refund. The head of consumer rights policy at ‘Which?’, Sue Davis states that these new policies “will help put consumers in the driving seat with proper transparency and protection”.

It has been reported that in the UK, around 3.5 million are accidentally rolled onto long-term contracts after signing up to a free trial, and auto-renewals catch out 1.5 million. These new laws have been set out to prevent these types of accidents for customers.

How Will These Laws Affect Streaming Services?

How these new laws may financially affect services that require subscriptions is yet to be seen. For example, streaming services’ revenues are highly driven by their subscription models, so platforms such as Netflix, Disney+ or Amazon Prime may take a hit.

High cancellations undoubtedly impact stock prices, and you can take a deeper look at how the market fluctuates in real-time using a CFD Broker. These services will have to come up with new ways to maintain a ‘positive average revenue per user’ to avoid stock prices being too dramatically affected.

In the last few years, Netflix has been experimenting with different ways to manage users’ subscriptions. They have moved away from subscriber growth to one that maximises revenue. For example, they had a crackdown on ‘password sharing’ in 2023-24, which required all accounts to be used within a single household.

While controversial, this move was ultimately a financial success for Netflix, which gained millions of new sign-ups as a result. This also helped them gain 300 million global subscribers by 2025. Now, with a clampdown on “subscription traps”, can streaming services find ways to have substantial growth in challenging circumstances?

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How Much Are You Spending on Subscriptions? New UK Laws Make Refunds and Cancellations Easier for Consumers 

The world’s largest live entertainment company has been dealt a bruising blow after a Manhattan federal jury ruled that Live Nation and its Ticketmaster subsidiary operated an unlawful monopoly over major concert venues in the United States, a verdict that is likely to reverberate through the global ticketing industry and intensify scrutiny of the firm’s dominance in markets including the United Kingdom.

After four days of deliberation, jurors sided with more than 30 US states that had pressed ahead with the civil action, concluding that the concert colossus had smothered competition across the live events business. The jury calculated that Ticketmaster had overcharged buyers by $1.72 per ticket, with the presiding judge still to determine the final quantum of damages.

For an industry that has long drawn the ire of fans, independent promoters and smaller venue operators, the ruling lands as something of a vindication. Counsel for the states, Jeffrey Kessler, described Live Nation in closing submissions as a “monopolistic bully” that had systematically pushed up prices for consumers. He told the court that Ticketmaster controls 86 per cent of the concert market and 73 per cent of the wider live events market once sport is included, numbers that underscore just how comprehensively the business has come to dominate the sector since Ticketmaster and Live Nation merged in 2010.

Live Nation, which generates more than $22bn in annual revenues, was unrepentant. Its lawyer, David Marriott, argued in his summation that the company’s scale was a consequence of operational excellence rather than anti-competitive conduct, telling jurors that “success is not against the antitrust laws in the United States”. The company has confirmed it intends to appeal, stating that it remains confident the “ultimate outcome” will not materially depart from a parallel settlement already reached with the US Department of Justice.

That settlement, announced only days into the trial after the Trump administration took over the federal case, obliges Live Nation to create a $280m fund for participating states, caps service fees at certain amphitheatres and opens a limited pathway for rival platforms such as SeatGeek and AXS to compete at some venues. Crucially, however, it stops short of forcing a structural break-up of Live Nation and Ticketmaster, a remedy that many industry observers and smaller ticketing challengers had been hoping for.

A handful of states signed up to the settlement, but the majority pressed on to trial, arguing that Washington had extracted insufficient concessions from the concert giant. Their gamble has now paid off. The verdict revives debate over whether a clean separation of Ticketmaster from Live Nation’s promotions and venue-operating arms remains the only effective remedy for a market that independent promoters have long claimed is tilted decisively against them.

The trial itself provided a rare look behind the curtain of an opaque business. Chief executive Michael Rapino took the stand and was questioned on a catalogue of controversies, including the 2022 Taylor Swift ticketing fiasco that drew political fury on both sides of the Atlantic. Rapino attributed that episode to a cyberattack. Less easily explained were internal messages from Live Nation executive Benjamin Baker, which surfaced during the proceedings, describing some prices as “outrageous”, branding customers “so stupid” and boasting that the firm was “robbing them blind”. Baker testified that the remarks had been “very immature and unacceptable”.

Regulatory pressure on Ticketmaster is building on multiple fronts. Last May the Federal Trade Commission introduced rules requiring upfront disclosure of concert ticket fees. Ticketmaster responded by scrapping its end-of-transaction processing fee, only for a Guardian investigation to reveal that the company had simultaneously increased other charges to plug the revenue hole. In an email to the Findlay Toyota Center in Arizona, the firm reportedly stated that it “must adjust fees to offset the revenue loss”. Former regulators have suggested the practice may breach the FTC’s ban on misleading charges, while senators including Connecticut Democrat Richard Blumenthal have accused the company of running “bait-and-switch” tactics and manipulating the market.

The saga has deep roots. Grunge pioneers Pearl Jam famously lodged an antitrust complaint against Ticketmaster with the Department of Justice back in the 1990s, only for regulators to walk away. Three decades on, the mood music has shifted. For independent UK promoters, smaller venues and the growing cohort of challenger ticketing platforms eyeing cross-Atlantic expansion, the verdict in Manhattan is the clearest signal yet that the ground beneath the live entertainment industry’s dominant player is finally beginning to shift.

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Live Nation and Ticketmaster ruled an illegal monopoly as US jury sides with States

One of Britain’s largest trade unions has delivered a blistering rebuke to ministers over the newly unveiled British Industrial Competitiveness Scheme, accusing Whitehall of turning its back on the very manufacturers that have long defined the country’s industrial heartlands.

The GMB, which represents tens of thousands of workers across Britain’s factory floors, said its members in gas-intensive sectors had been “disgracefully ignored” by a package the Government had trailed as a lifeline for domestic industry. The union’s verdict will make uncomfortable reading in Downing Street, where ministers have staked considerable political capital on reviving the fortunes of British manufacturing and narrowing the competitiveness gap with rivals in Europe, North America and Asia.

Gary Smith, GMB General Secretary, did not mince his words. “Gas-intensive industries in the UK have been shamefully ignored by the Government in this announcement, it’s a total disgrace,” he said. Mr Smith went on to warn that members working in the nation’s world-famous ceramics sector, along with those producing the bricks that underpin Britain’s construction supply chain, were “sickened at the lack of support” on offer. “Workers in manufacturing companies across the UK need urgent help,” he added. “This isn’t it.”

The intervention throws a harsh spotlight on the scheme’s design. The ceramics cluster centred on Stoke-on-Trent, together with the brickmaking operations that supply housebuilders and infrastructure projects up and down the country, relies heavily on natural gas to fire kilns at the extreme temperatures their products demand. Punishing wholesale energy prices, combined with the cumulative weight of climate levies and network charges, have left these small and mid-sized manufacturers paying substantially more for power than their Continental competitors, a longstanding grievance that industry bodies have pressed successive administrations to address.

For owner-managers in the Potteries and the brick belts of the Midlands and the North, the omission will sting. Many of these firms are quintessential British SMEs: privately held, deeply rooted in their communities, and exporting heritage products that still carry weight on the world stage. Their plea has been consistent, that any credible competitiveness strategy must begin with the cost of energy, without which no amount of capital allowances or skills funding will move the dial.

Whether the Government chooses to reopen the scheme’s scope, or whether a separate package for energy-intensive industries is now inevitable, will be watched closely over the coming weeks. What is beyond doubt is that today’s announcement has, in the GMB’s eyes, fallen well short of the mark.

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GMB union attacks government for ‘disgracefully ignoring’ UK’s gas-intensive manufacturers

Britain’s video games industry is at risk of haemorrhaging talent and intellectual property to more nimble overseas rivals unless Whitehall moves swiftly to sharpen its tax and investment incentives, a leading advisory firm has warned.

With France, Ireland and Australia aggressively courting studios through increasingly generous reliefs, the UK’s reputation as a global gaming powerhouse, home to franchises from Grand Theft Auto to Tomb Raider, could begin to slip, according to audit, tax and business advisory firm Blick Rothenberg.

Speaking during London Games Festival week, Mandy Girder, a partner at the firm, said the sector urgently needed the Government to “level up” its support if Britain was to keep its seat at the top table of global games development.

“Without decisive action from the Government, the UK risks losing both talent and intellectual property to other countries,” she said. “France, Australia and Ireland are offering increasingly generous and accessible incentive regimes designed to attract investment.”

The London Games Festival, now a fixture in the industry calendar, has put a spotlight on British creativity, but Girder cautioned that creativity alone would not keep the UK ahead of the pack.

“The festival highlights the UK’s undeniable creative strength, but creativity alone will not secure long-term global leadership,” she said. “The Government must step up tax relief and investment in the industry.”

While the UK’s Video Games Expenditure Credit and broader creative industry reliefs have underpinned growth in recent years, Girder warned that the regime was increasingly seen by studios as cumbersome when set beside rivals abroad.

“Headline rates are competitive, but the system is often viewed as more complex and, in some cases, less flexible or accessible than the incentive regimes in countries such as Ireland and Australia,” she said.

Recent tightening of eligibility rules is already beginning to bite. Under the revised framework, at least 10 per cent of development costs must now be incurred in the UK rather than across the wider European Economic Area, a change intended to bolster domestic employment but which has tripped up projects structured around continental teams.

“Whilst intended to encourage the use of UK-based talent, this has been restrictive on the number of successful claims for projects already under way and structured around European teams,” Girder said. “It has led to a decline in the availability of these tax credits.”

She is calling for a simpler, more generous regime, backed by targeted incentives explicitly designed to draw inward investment.

“Simplifying and enhancing the UK’s tax framework, alongside introducing targeted incentives to attract inward investment, would significantly strengthen the UK’s global positioning,” she said.

Access to finance is another persistent headache, particularly for studios trying to move beyond the start-up phase. While seed capital is relatively easy to come by, scale-up funding, the kind that allows mid-sized studios to expand internationally and retain their IP, remains elusive.

“Early-stage funding is relatively accessible, but mid-sized studios often face barriers when seeking the scale-up capital needed to expand internationally and retain valuable intellectual property,” Girder said. “This funding gap risks limiting the UK’s ability to fully capitalise on its creative strengths.”

The Government’s newly launched Creative Industries Sector Plan, which opens £28.5 million in funding for the next generation of games developers, is a step in the right direction, Girder conceded.

“The UK has long been recognised as a creative powerhouse, home to world-class studios and exceptional talent behind globally successful titles such as Grand Theft Auto and Tomb Raider,” she said. “The sector plan is a positive step forward.”

But she questioned whether the intervention goes far enough to tackle the structural weaknesses in the industry’s funding pipeline.

“The question remains whether this level of support is sufficient to address the structural funding challenges facing the sector,” she said. “A more comprehensive approach, combining competitive tax relief, grants and alternative financing options, will be essential to unlock sustained growth.”

Her message to ministers was blunt. “Now is the time for industry and Government to work together to simplify incentives, unlock scale-up funding, and ensure the UK remains a destination of choice for global games investment.

“The London Games Festival turns the spotlight on the UK’s role as a leading force in the global video games market, and on the steps the Government needs to take to secure its future competitiveness.”

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Britain’s gaming industry needs a power-up or risks losing its crown to France, Ireland and Australia

European aviation is staring down the barrel of a fuel crisis that could ground flights across the continent by June, the International Energy Agency has warned, with reserves thinning at an alarming pace and replacement supplies proving stubbornly difficult to secure.

In its latest monthly oil market report, the Paris-based watchdog, which counsels 32 member states on energy security, said Europe was sitting on roughly six weeks’ worth of jet fuel. Unless the bloc can source at least half of the volumes it would ordinarily draw from the Middle East, stocks will hit a critical threshold within weeks.

The warning comes as the Strait of Hormuz, the artery through which the bulk of Gulf jet fuel flows to international markets, remains effectively shut. Iran moved to close the waterway more than six weeks ago in retaliation for joint American and Israeli military strikes, and the blockade has sent kerosene prices soaring and rattled airline finance directors from Luton to Lisbon.

Speaking to the Associated Press, IEA executive director Fatih Birol did not mince his words: flight cancellations, he cautioned, could be weeks away if the taps remain shut.

Historically, Europe has leaned on the Gulf for around three-quarters of its imported jet fuel. The IEA noted that refineries in other major exporting nations, South Korea, India and China chief among them, are themselves heavily reliant on Middle Eastern crude, meaning the disruption has, in its own phrasing, jammed the gears of the global aviation fuel market.

European buyers are now scrambling to plug the gap. American refiners have sharply accelerated jet fuel exports in recent weeks, but the IEA reckons that even if every barrel leaving US shores were routed to European airports, it would cover only a little over half the shortfall.

Under the agency’s modelling, a replacement rate below 50 per cent would trigger physical shortages at selected airports, forcing cancellations and what analysts politely term “demand destruction”. Even if three-quarters of the missing volumes can be replaced, the same squeeze is expected to bite by August. The upshot, the IEA concluded, is that European markets will need to hustle considerably harder to attract cargoes from alternative sources if inventories are to hold through the summer peak.

The financial strain on carriers is already acute. Fuel typically accounts for between 20 and 40 per cent of an airline’s operating costs, and the benchmark European jet fuel price touched a record $1,838 (£1,387) per tonne at the start of April, more than double the $831 recorded before hostilities erupted.

Brussels, for its part, is treading carefully. The European Commission said this week there was no evidence of shortages within the EU but conceded that supply issues could surface in the near future. A spokesperson confirmed that crude flows to European refineries remained stable with no immediate need to tap strategic reserves, adding that oil and gas coordination groups were now meeting weekly. Commission president Ursula von der Leyen is expected to unveil a package of energy measures next week.

The mood at Europe’s airports is less sanguine. Airports Council International, the continent’s airport trade body, wrote to the Commission last week warning that fuel shortages could materialise unless the Strait of Hormuz reopens within three weeks.

The pressure is already showing on airline balance sheets. In a trading update on Thursday, EasyJet said it had absorbed £25m of additional fuel costs in March alone as a direct consequence of the Middle East conflict, and that was despite the Luton-based low-cost carrier having hedged more than three-quarters of its jet fuel requirement at pre-war prices. The airline flagged near-term uncertainty over both fuel costs and passenger demand, a combination that rarely bodes well for earnings.

For SME operators in the aviation supply chain, ground handlers, charter firms, regional carriers and the small logistics businesses that depend on dependable air freight, the coming weeks will be a test of cash reserves and commercial nerve. With prices at record highs and supply far from guaranteed, the summer schedule is shaping up to be the most precarious Europe’s aviation sector has faced in a generation.

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Europe faces jet fuel crunch as gulf supply crisis deepens

British tradespeople and small business owners are turning to the internet in record numbers to investigate a switch out of diesel, with Google searches for “electric vans” leaping by 143% in March, new figures show.

The analysis, compiled by online comparison site The Van Insurer, part of the Howden group, found that enquiries peaked in the days immediately before the Easter weekend, a period that traditionally sees sole traders, couriers and last‑mile delivery operators reviewing the running costs of their fleets ahead of the busier spring and summer trading months.

With diesel still powering the overwhelming majority of the 4.6 million vans on Britain’s roads, the scale of the surge points to a marked shift in sentiment among operators who have spent the past two years absorbing successive increases at the forecourt. Industry observers say the combination of stubbornly high pump prices, tightening clean‑air zone restrictions in London, Birmingham, Bristol and beyond, and the narrowing premium on new battery‑electric models is nudging even the most reluctant drivers to crunch the numbers on an EV switch.

Ed Bevis, commercial director at The Van Insurer, said diesel operators were bearing the brunt of the current squeeze. “Diesel van drivers are being hit hardest by the current fuel crisis, so it’s hardly surprising we’re seeing a sharp rise in interest around electric vans,” he said.

“Many owners are starting to look towards a future that’s less dependent on fossil fuels and less exposed to volatile fuel prices and running‑cost uncertainty. As a result, we expect demand for battery and hybrid‑electric van insurance to accelerate over the coming months.”

For Britain’s army of self‑employed traders, the plumbers, sparks, florists, parcel drivers and mobile mechanics for whom the van is not a vehicle but a livelihood, the economics are increasingly difficult to ignore. Even modest fluctuations at the pump translate directly into thinner margins on already pressured jobs, while the residual values on late‑plate diesel models have softened as buyers weigh the risk of further regulatory tightening.

Mr Bevis acknowledged the financial strain on the sector and said the comparison site was attempting to take some of the sting out of premiums. “At a time when many consumers and business owners are having to count every penny, we believe it’s important to offer meaningful support, particularly for those whose vans are integral to earning a living,” he said, pointing to £500 of free excess protection now being offered on qualifying policies.

Whether the March spike marks the beginning of a decisive migration away from diesel or simply another bout of curiosity from hard‑pressed operators will depend heavily on the direction of wholesale fuel prices, the pace of the public charging rollout and the Treasury’s next move on vehicle taxation. For now, however, the direction of travel in the search data is unmistakable, and insurers, dealers and manufacturers will all be watching the next set of figures closely.

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Diesel drivers drive electric van searches up 143% as fuel costs bite

Britain’s economy was firing on more cylinders than the City had dared hope in the weeks before Israel and Iran went to war, but small and mid-sized businesses should brace themselves for a sharp turning of the tide.

Figures from the Office for National Statistics released this morning show gross domestic product expanded by 0.5 per cent in February, trouncing the consensus forecast of 0.1 per cent pencilled in by economists polled ahead of the release. January’s reading was also nudged higher, from flat to 0.1 per cent growth, lending weight to the argument that the economy had genuine momentum heading into the spring.

Taken together, the three months to February produced growth of 0.5 per cent, up from 0.3 per cent in the preceding quarter — a respectable clip by the standards of a British economy that has spent much of the past two years trudging along the margins of recession.

Grant Fitzner, chief economist at the ONS, pointed to a broad-based services recovery as the principal driver, noting that car production had also bounced back after last autumn’s cyber attack knocked output sideways. The construction sector, long the weak link in the chain, managed a 1.0 per cent rebound.

For owner-managed firms across retail, hospitality and professional services, the ecosystem that accounts for the lion’s share of the 80 per cent of GDP represented by services, the February numbers will feel like vindication after a bruising winter of weak consumer demand and punishing borrowing costs.

The trouble is that the figures are already yesterday’s news. The Iranian conflict, which erupted on 28 February, has rewritten the economic script in a matter of weeks.

Brent crude has climbed 30 per cent since hostilities began, feeding straight through to forecourts and utility bills. The effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly a fifth of global seaborne oil and liquefied natural gas passes, has rattled supply chains from Felixstowe to Southampton and left importers scrambling to renegotiate contracts.

Yael Selfin, chief economist at KPMG, warned that February’s bounce would prove “short lived”, with elevated energy costs and shipping disruption likely to act as a drag on output for much of the second quarter. Even as hopes grow of a diplomatic off-ramp, she cautioned that normalising freight flows and energy production takes time, time that cash-strapped SMEs working on thin margins can ill afford.

The inflation picture has deteriorated accordingly. With the headline rate already sitting at 3 per cent, the Bank of England now expects CPI to climb as high as 3.5 per cent over the coming six months; the International Monetary Fund has gone further, pencilling in a peak of 4 per cent. Only weeks ago, Threadneedle Street had been guiding towards a return to the 2 per cent target from April.

Against that backdrop, the Bank’s Monetary Policy Committee voted in March to hold Bank Rate at 3.75 per cent, pausing the easing cycle to see how the oil shock feeds through. For smaller businesses hoping for cheaper debt to refinance Covid-era loans or invest in growth, the reprieve they had been banking on is now firmly on ice.

Most City economists expect the March GDP print to come in flat or negative, marking the beginning of what some are already calling a period of heightened fragility — or, in the worst case, outright stagflation, that toxic combination of stagnant output and rising prices that policymakers spend their careers trying to avoid.

“The February GDP print marks the calm before the storm,” said Sanjay Raja, chief UK economist at Deutsche Bank.

The IMF has confirmed as much. This week the fund downgraded its UK growth forecast for the year to 0.8 per cent, down from the 1.3 per cent it projected in January, and warned that Britain faces the biggest hit of any G7 economy from the Middle East conflict, a function of the country’s heavy reliance on imported energy and its exposure to global services demand.

Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, has already conceded that the war will “come at a cost” to households and businesses, language that suggests the Treasury is laying the ground for a difficult summer.

James Murray, chief secretary to the Treasury, struck a more defiant tone, insisting that “growth only happens when the economy is on solid ground” and that the government’s plan to “restore stability, boost investment and deliver reform” was the right course for a “stronger, more resilient Britain”.

For the millions of SME owners who drive the bulk of private sector employment, the message from the data is uncomfortably clear. The foundations laid in February were encouraging, but the storm that followed has changed the weather entirely, and the businesses best placed to weather it will be those that move quickly to hedge energy exposure, shore up working capital and pressure-test their supply chains before the second-quarter numbers lay bare just how much damage has been done.

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UK economy surged before Iran conflict but stagflation now looms for Britain’s SMEs

Britain’s steel producers are sounding the alarm over a widening electricity price chasm with European rivals, warning that the escalating Middle East war has pushed UK power costs to levels that threaten the industry’s survival and could derail the Government’s flagship Steel Strategy.

In its response to the Government’s publication today of findings from the consultation on the British Industrial Competitiveness Scheme (BICS), trade body UK Steel has offered cautious praise tempered with a stark warning: while the new scheme will deliver meaningful relief to parts of the steel supply chain, it does nothing to tackle the crippling wholesale electricity costs squeezing steelmakers themselves.

The numbers make sobering reading for anyone invested in the fortunes of British heavy industry. UK steelmakers are now paying up to 77% more for electricity than their counterparts in France and Germany, a yawning gap that has ballooned from roughly 25% in a matter of months. Indicative industrial prices for 2026 place UK costs at around £84 per megawatt hour, against approximately £48 in France and £65 in Germany.

The fallout is measured in tens of millions. Without intervention, UK Steel calculates the industry will shoulder an additional £82 million in annual electricity costs compared with operating in France, a burden that risks stalling decarbonisation projects, bleeding order books to continental rivals and undermining the credibility of the Government’s Steel Strategy.

The BICS itself has been broadly welcomed for what it does offer. The scheme will materially reduce electricity bills for parts of the steel supply chain and energy-intensive assets that have until now fallen outside existing support frameworks. For companies previously ineligible for any relief, it represents a significant and overdue lifeline.

The sticking point is that steelmakers themselves already benefit from similar support via the British Industry Supercharger, leaving the core competitiveness challenge untouched. That challenge has been brought into painful relief by the Middle East war, which has sent wholesale gas and electricity prices surging and exposed once again the UK’s structural dependence on gas-driven power pricing.

Frank Aaskov, Director of Energy and Climate Change Policy at UK Steel, said the scheme was a helpful step but fell short of addressing the fundamental problem.

“The BICS will bring welcome relief for parts of the steel supply chain and manufacturers not currently covered by existing schemes and materially lower their energy bills,” he said. “But it will not lower electricity prices for steel producers themselves, who remain exposed to exceptionally high wholesale power costs.”

Aaskov added that the deterioration had been rapid and severe. “That problem has intensified sharply in recent months. As a result of the Middle East war, UK steelmakers are now paying nearly 80% more for electricity than competitors in France and Germany, up from around 25% previously. This is happening despite the support already in place and reflects the UK’s continued exposure to gas-driven electricity prices.”

The industry body is pressing ministers to go further, advocating for a wholesale price rebalancing mechanism along the lines proposed by consultancy Baringa. Such a measure, UK Steel argues, would realign Britain’s industrial power costs with those of continental competitors and restore the investment confidence the sector urgently needs.

“To make the Steel Strategy a success and deliver the Government’s industrial and decarbonisation ambitions, additional measures are now essential,” Aaskov said. “That means targeted action to bring wholesale electricity prices into line with our European competitors that gives industry the confidence to invest.”

For SME suppliers woven through the steel value chain, from specialist fabricators to downstream manufacturers, the stakes are considerable. A weakened domestic steel industry would reverberate through thousands of smaller firms whose order books depend on healthy demand from the big producers. The question now facing Westminster is whether a partial fix is enough, or whether bolder intervention on wholesale pricing is the only credible route to keeping British steel in the game.

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UK steelmakers face 77% electricity price gap as Middle East war deepens competitiveness crisis

Britain’s drive to establish itself as a global artificial intelligence powerhouse is heading for a direct confrontation with its legally binding climate commitments, after planning documents revealed that the country’s first “nationally significant” data centre would be fired by gas rather than clean energy.

The £2 billion Wapseys Wood development in Buckinghamshire, backed by SDC Capital Partners, would consist of up to three hyperscale data centre buildings, each drawing as much as 100 megawatts of power. Crucially, it would also feature an on-site gas turbine energy generation centre capable of producing between 270 and 350 megawatts, which developers describe in submitted documents as necessary to deliver a “resilient and reliable power supply”.

The scheme is the first data centre proposal to be accepted for consideration under the government’s nationally significant infrastructure regime, a designation that hands the final decision to the communities secretary, Steve Reed, rather than the local authority. If waved through, it would rank among the ten largest sites of its kind in the UK, with its promoters claiming the development would create 400 jobs and deliver roughly 5 per cent of domestic computing demand over the next five years.

The row over Wapseys Wood reflects a wider bottleneck that is reshaping the economics of Britain’s digital infrastructure. With grid connection queues stretching for years, developers are increasingly bypassing the electricity network altogether and turning instead to on-site generation, or to the gas grid.

Figures from Future Energy Networks, the trade body representing pipeline operators, show that 113 applications have been lodged by data centre developers over the past two years, with enquiries in 2025 running at roughly three times the level of the previous year. Seven of those applications have already secured agreements to connect. Should every one of them proceed, they would collectively consume enough gas to heat 1.3 million homes.

Toby Perkins, the Labour MP who chairs the environmental audit committee, warned that the scale of the demand merits serious political attention. “That a small number of centres could demand the same energy as millions of homes should give us pause for thought,” he said. “Data centres may well play an important role in growing our economy, but we should be careful about approving projects that put the net zero transition at risk.”

Critics argue that Wapseys Wood is merely the most visible example of an emerging trend. Donald Campbell, director of advocacy at Foxglove, a non-profit campaigning for more accountable technology policy, said the developers had made no effort to dress the project up as environmentally friendly. He cautioned that if the bulk of the pending gas grid applications were approved, “climate pollution from big tech will go through the roof”.

The shift mirrors developments in the United States, where hyperscalers have moved aggressively to secure their own generation. Meta is building seven new natural gas plants to feed its Hyperion campus in Louisiana, a site that could eventually draw up to 5 gigawatts. Microsoft, meanwhile, is working on plans for a gas-fired plant in West Texas of similar scale.

The carbon implications for Britain are material. Oliver Hayes, head of policy and campaigns at Global Action Plan, estimated that the Wapseys Wood turbine alone could emit around half a million tonnes of carbon dioxide annually, set against total UK emissions of 367 million tonnes. “Tech bosses claim the lack of grid connections threatens their AI goldrush,” he said. “But ministers must not allow them to dash for gas instead.”

Under current planning rules, any proposed new gas plant must set out a credible path to decarbonisation. The Wapseys Wood developers have pointed to a future switch to clean-burning hydrogen. Yet industry specialists are sceptical that the technology will be commercially deployable on the timescales required. Marten Ford, advisory project leader at Aurora Energy Research, said that although the current test focuses on technical readiness, it does not address cost competitiveness. “Given current market conditions, near-term conversion to hydrogen is unlikely, with feasibility more plausible later in the 2030s,” he said.

A spokesman for the Wapseys Wood project defended the proposal, saying it responded to “an urgent need for new data centres in the UK” and would bring significant economic, employment and environmental benefits. He stressed that the scheme remains at pre-application stage and that SDC Capital Partners would continue engaging with the local community, including through a second round of public consultation later this year.

The government, for its part, insisted that the AI build-out and climate targets can be reconciled. “Data centres are vital to driving growth and AI is increasingly part of the high-tech solutions that will help us solve environmental challenges,” a spokesman said, adding that the AI Energy Council is actively seeking investment in new clean power sources and that ministers are working to accelerate grid connections and curb energy costs for eligible projects.

For Britain’s small and mid-sized technology businesses, the stakes of the debate are significant. Cheap, abundant computing capacity is increasingly the raw material of enterprise innovation, and delays to new infrastructure risk pushing AI workloads offshore. But a dash for gas, if replicated across the pipeline of pending projects, could saddle the UK with a new generation of carbon-emitting assets just as other sectors are being asked to decarbonise at pace. The Wapseys Wood decision, when it lands on Steve Reed’s desk, will offer an early indication of how Whitehall intends to balance those competing imperatives.

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Britain’s first major AI data centre sparks net zero clash as gas power plans revealed

Britain’s supermarkets could be staring down the barrel of patchy shelves by midsummer, with ministers quietly war-gaming a scenario in which the continuing conflict with Iran chokes off carbon dioxide supplies to the country’s food and drink industry.

Whitehall officials have been rehearsing what they describe internally as a “reasonable worst-case scenario” should the strait of Hormuz remain closed into June, shipping routes stay jammed, and a mechanical hiccup at one of Britain’s critical CO2 plants compound the pressure. The exercise, codenamed Turnstone and convened under the Cobra emergency framework, has drawn in officials from Downing Street, the Treasury and the Ministry of Defence.

News of the drill, first surfaced by The Times, has prompted a rapid-fire reassurance campaign from ministers, who insist the planning is prudent rather than panicked. Business Secretary Peter Kyle told Times Radio on Thursday that the leak was “unhelpful” but argued the public “need to be reassured that we are doing this kind of planning”. CO2 supplies, he added, were “not a concern” for the UK economy.

For small and medium-sized food producers, brewers and hospitality operators, however, the contingency talk lands at an awkward moment. The summer trading window, already inflated by the World Cup kicking off on 11 June, is make-or-break territory for independent breweries and wholesalers. A squeeze on carbon dioxide would ripple rapidly through their supply chains, hitting everything from pint pulls to packaged meats.

Carbon dioxide, though a by-product of other industrial processes, is the quiet workhorse of British food and drink. The gas is used to stun pigs and poultry at abattoirs, to pack fresh meat and salad leaves in modified-atmosphere packaging that keeps bacteria at bay, and to put the fizz in beer and soft drinks. It also underpins refrigeration, MRI scanning, surgical procedures and the cooling of nuclear reactors.

The UK ranks among Europe’s heaviest consumers of the gas, a dependency that has already prompted pre-emptive action. In March, Mr Kyle earmarked £100m to restart the mothballed Ensus bioethanol plant on Teesside for a three-month run, specifically to hedge against wartime shortages. On Thursday he argued the Teesside decision showed “we are doing this kind of action behind the scenes to keep resilience in our economy”.

Britain’s largest grocer, for its part, appears sanguine. Tesco chief executive Ken Murphy said the government was “doing the right thing” in preparing for the worst, calling the analysis a reasonable one and welcoming the Ensus reopening. But he stressed Tesco had “seen nothing at this point” in its own supply chain and that none of its suppliers had flagged problems with CO2 availability.

Mr Murphy, whose business has absorbed six years of rolling disruption, Covid, Brexit, energy shocks, inflation, said Tesco was “constantly working on various scenarios internally” and confident it could head off issues before they reached the shop floor. The bigger near-term headache, he suggested, has actually been the punishing weather across southern Spain and north Africa, though shoppers would be hard-pressed to spot the fallout because the grocer had been able to “flex” its sourcing.

A government spokesperson underlined the caveat that “reasonable worst-case scenarios are a planning tool used by experts and are not a prediction of future events”, adding that ministers were “continuing to work closely with business groups to tackle the impacts of events in the Middle East”.

For SME owners watching the tea leaves, the message from Whitehall is calibrated: keep calm, carry on, but don’t mistake the silence on the shelves for complacency in the corridors of power. With Hormuz still contested and the diplomatic track with Tehran far from delivering a durable settlement, the summer trading season is shaping up as a stress test for a supply chain that, as 2021’s last major CO2 crunch demonstrated, can turn from background utility to front-page crisis within days.

Read more:
Supermarket shelves face summer gaps as Iran war threatens UK’s CO2 lifeline