Published: 14 August 2023
By Suzanne Evans, Director, Political Insight
A report in The Guardian over the weekend revealed that bailiffs hired by local councils to recover unpaid debts have seen their profits rise to record levels. Newlyn Group, which is hired by councils to recover unpaid traffic fines and council tax, saw its turnover from debt collection increase by 43.8% to £25.8m in the year to December 2022, while its gross profit rose to £15.5m. Company documents describe the figures as Newlyn’s “best ever results”. Another company, Marston Holdings, made £23.1m operating profit in the year to May 2022, after the number of the cases it was dealing with rose by 50% to 1.72m, according to company documents filed last week. In 2021 the firm made a £12.5m profit. Marston Holdings is involved primarily in “debt recovery and enforcement services” including working with 145 councils and chasing unpaid vehicle tax for the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency. The newspaper notes that Council tax arrears have also increased and are now at a historic high of £5.5bn.
The Rail, Maritime and Transport union (RMT) says 20,000 of its members in 14 train operators would walk out on 26th August and 2nd September, claiming it has been left with “little choice” but to take further action as it had seen no improved or revised offer from the Rail Delivery Group. The train operating companies affected by the new strikes are: Chiltern Railways, Cross Country Trains, Greater Anglia, LNER, East Midlands Railway, c2c, Great Western Railway, Northern Trains, South Eastern, South Western Railway, Transpennine Express, Avanti West Coast, West Midlands Trains and GTR (including Gatwick Express).
A survey of 2,000 British employers by The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) suggests firms expect to raise pay by 5% over the coming year, and revealed they are increasingly making counteroffers to keep staff tempted by higher wages from rival firms. Two fifths of respondents said they had made a counteroffer to keep staff in the past year, with just over half saying they were resorting to counteroffers more than previously, compared with 9% who said the opposite. Where a counteroffer was made, in 38% of cases it matched the competing salary and in 40% of cases it exceeded it. However, almost a third of employers also said they believed counteroffers were an ineffective way to keep staff.
Pubs in England and Wales will be able to continue selling takeaway drinks until March 2025. The Covid-related licensing rule was due to expire on 30th September.
Wilko paid out a total of £77m to the owners and former shareholders in the decade before its collapse, The Mail on Sunday revealed yesterday. The biggest payout was £63m in 2015 when, after 85 years of running the business together, one side of the Wilkinson family sold their shares to the other. Analysis of Wilko's accounts shows that multi-million pound dividends continued even as the company headed for the rocks, the newspaper said. These included a £3m dividend last year, which was paid despite Wilko racking up losses of £39m. A total of £3.2m was doled out in 2018 when Wilko slid to a £65m loss. Wilko's failure has left the retirement fund with a multi-million pound shortfall that “is likely to be bailed out by the Pension Protection Fund (PPF)”, it added, while workers who have not yet retired could see their pensions reduced. The dividend payouts were branded “a disgrace” by Nadine Houghton, national officer at the GMB union,who said: “The business could have thrived under strong market conditions for bargain retailers. But with owners prioritising their own dividends it has been left to go under”.
“Sales of Graham Norton's wine are fizzing as drinkers increasingly seek out celebrity alcohol brands,” the Daily Mail reports this morning. The TV host's GN label, which he launched a decade ago, sold more than 3.7million bottles last year, according to its New Zealand maker Invivo. The firm had to buy more vineyards this year to meet demand. Sales over the ten years Norton's wine has been on sale are expected to hit 20m bottles by the end of December.
The Co-operative Bank has bought the mortgage portfolio of Sainsbury’s Bank for £464m. The portfolio contains around 3,500 customers and is worth nearly £480m. The purchase ends Sainsbury’s Bank’s presence in the UK mortgage market. It stopped new lending in 2019 and was reportedly planning a sale of its banking arm in October 2020.
Daily Mail owner Lord Rothermere is said by Sky News to be interested in buying The Daily Telegraph, and is holding talks with various investors to seal the deal. A Daily Mail General Trust spokesman said: "We have been engaged with many parties over the possible synergies between DMG Media and the Daily Telegraph and have registered our interest with Lloyds [the administrators] but we have no formal plans and there is no consortium."
British manufacturer McMurtry Automotive has submitted plans for a new multi-million pound factory in Wotton-under-Edge near Stroud in Gloucestershire. Established in 2016 by Renishaw's co-founder Sir David McMurtry, the firm is renowned for its innovative hypercars, including the recently unveiled Spéirling PURE.
YouGov CEO Stephan Shakespere has said in an interview with the Financial Times that he is considering switching the polling company’s London Stock Exchange (LSE) to New York. “I think the markets are better at supporting companies like ours there,” he said. "[The US] spends the most on marketing data; they are the most savvy. It is a natural base." He added that his company’s purchase of German market research group GfK SE last year had increased YouGov’s size by 50% and given it the necessary scale to consider the move. The FT said such a move would be yet another blow to the LSE which has seen a series of British companies moving or listing stateside.
Manchester United fans are planning to protest about the delayed sale of the club outside Old Trafford tonight, ahead of their first Premier League match of the season against Wolves. MUFC is owned by the Glazer family, and it has been almost nine months since they announced the sale, but they have neither accepted an offer or explained why they have not done so. Offers have been received from British billionaire and Ineos owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe and Qatar’s Sheikh Jassim Bin Hamad Al Thani. The offers are short of the £6bn valuation that the Glazers are said to have targeted, but nonetheless would represent a world record sum paid for a sports team, City AM says.
“As time goes on this feels less like a sale process and more like the Glazer family is holding Manchester United and its fans hostage,” a spokesperson for the Manchester United Supporters Trust said in a statement. “The united message of fans is clear – sell the club. And if they do not intend to do so, at least have the courage to say that and explain what the charade of the last nine months has been about”.
The waiting list to secure a place at private members club Soho House has risen to “all-time high” with approximately 95,000 individuals signed up. Soho House & Co Inc. revealed its growing popularity as part of its second quarter results, reporting that revenues rose 18.5% year-on-year to $288.9m (£227m). The number of members also grew to 176,305 from 168,685 in first quarter 2023, and 23.9% year on year. Memberships cost upwards of £1,000 a year at the exclusive club, which originated in originated in London but now has branches across Europe, Asia, and North America.
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