You don't have to be a genius to work out the knock-on effects of imposing a Workplace Parking Levy (WPL). One of the reasons we campaigned against a proposed WPL in Bristol last year was that residential streets would be clogged up with more parked cars as employees stop parking... Read more...
We have written extensively over the years about 'The Public', an arts centre in West Bromwich. The omens were never good from the start. It was completed two years late in 2008 and ran massively over-budget - costing some £72 million. Some regard the design as iconic, but as my... Read more...
New Land Registry figures released by property management firm London Central Portfolio have revealed that the average price of a flat in England and Wales has risen above £250,000, taking them into the punitive 3 per cent band of Stamp Duty. Properties bought for a quarter of a million pounds... Read more...
On Saturday I was joined by several TaxPayers' Alliance supporters when we held the Cardiff leg of our ‘Stamp Out Stamp Duty’ campaign to inform local taxpayers how this particular tax affects them. Many people I spoke to agreed that Stamp Duty is a horrible tax and discourages individual as... Read more...
Earlier this week we launched our new ‘Stamp Out Stamp Duty’ campaign. We will be holding a stall in Cardiff tomorrow to inform local taxpayers about what this punitive tax means for young people trying to get onto the housing ladder, for growing families and for Welsh jobs. The stall... Read more...
The Sun ran a poll carried out by YouGov last week, revealing the public’s deep dissatisfaction with the way government spends taxpayers' money and the lavish severance packets of top public sector bureaucrats. Read more...
Figures released by The Department for Communities and Local Government last week revealed the huge amount councils are raking in from parking. They are set make £635 million in 2013-14, up from £601m last year. Parking is an increasingly becoming a nice little earner for councils. Read more...
A recent report by the RAC reveals that Bath and North East Somerset (B&NES) council are raking in just over £5 million in profit from its car parks, making it the ninth most profitable parking regime in the country outside of London. Read more...
At the 11th Bristol Cider Festival, held in Brunel’s historic Old Station at Temple Meads, hundreds of local cider drinkers raised their glasses to our ‘Cut Cider Tax’ campaign and signed our petition calling for an end to the Cider Duty Escalator. Even the Mangled Wurzels tribute band took time... Read more...
Cardiff Council, as part of its Local Development Plan (LDP), has been considering the future of Traveller and Gypsy sites in the city. The LDP is a plan for the future and is an attempt to ensure that the residents of the city have the facilities they need. Read more...
The Managing Director of hotel chain Travelodge has written to Communities Secretary Eric Pickles to complain about the high levels of the construction tax in London, known officially as the "Community Investment Levy". The budget hotel boss's remarks give a concrete example of how taxes like the Community Investment Levy... Read more...
Several West Country MPs are rallying to our South West TaxPayers' Alliance ‘Cut Cider Tax’ campaign. Ahead of its formal launch at the Bristol Cider Festival on 2nd August, I met Ian Liddell-Grainger, MP for Bridgwater and Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Cider Group, at his constituency base in the... Read more...
Dominique Lazanksi wrote last week about the disastrous project, 'South Yorkshire Digital Region'. Thankfully the Government has decided to pull the plug so as not to expose taxpayers to even more losses, but what has happened to those people who were responsible for making the decisions? Read more...
Full-pay suspensions by West Yorkshire police have cost taxpayers more than half a million pounds over the last three years, bringing the total paid to suspended workers by police forces, health trusts and councils in Yorkshire to more than £8 million. The £513,114.58 was paid out to 28 officers and staff by... Read more...
The ill-fated South Yorkshire Digital Region scheme set up to deliver broadband to the area has finally lost the support of the government. The Yorkshire Post reports today that Business Minister Michael Fallon announced that the government will stop supporting the scheme. This means that the four local councils involved... Read more...
Government officials would like us to believe that its Energy Company Obligation (ECO) programme, despite costing £1.3 billion, will have “no impact on consumer bills.” But when a major player in the industry warns against the risk they pose to energy bills, the Government’s blue-sky thinking starts to fall apart.... Read more...
Many employees in the public and private sectors have seen their pay cut or frozen to protect their job. Not so for the top brass at Network Rail: three of the five executive directors at the taxpayer funded monopoly are set to receive £300,000 each next year just to stay... Read more...
Despite being scrapped in 2010, the FiReControl project to establish nine regional fire control centres continues to be a millstone around taxpayers' necks. The Public Accounts Committee report released yesterday highlights that FiReControl has wasted at least £482 million of taxpayers’ money and still racked by problems. Margaret Hodge MP, the committee’s chair,... Read more...
Kent residents were aghast last week at news that the County Council had hatched a plan to increase the amount councillors could claim for mileage by 50 per cent. Read more...
VAT at 117 per cent! What’s going on? A local retailer and TPA supporter tells me about a strange incident at a government-sponsored business event in Bristol. Read more...
In recent months both Liberum Capital and RWE npower have estimated that the Government’s policies – which require around £150 billion in the energy sector – will lead to a roughly 30 per cent above inflation increase in your power bills by 2020 (a 19 per cent increase in dual... Read more...
A National Folk Music Centre in Gwynedd, North Wales is at the centre of attention after a BBC report exposed that the Welsh Government, with the help of European funding, has spent £1.2m of taxpayers' money funding a project in a comparatively small town in rural North Wales. Read more...
Lurene Joseph is the chief executive of Leeds and Partners, a Leeds City Council funded investment initiative. Despite the Council having to reduce its expenditure by ten of millions of pounds, Ms Joseph still manages to enjoy £285 taxi journeys and overseas trips with stays in five-star hotels, letting struggling... Read more...
On a rather blustery day in Darlington, TPA supporters gathered to hand leaflets to local people publicising our new 'Stop the Energy Swindle' campaign. We met some people who had already written to their MP using energyswindle.org and one supporter showed us the letter they received. Read more...