Category: 3. Business

Damage caused to the outside of a city centre bank has prompted a police appeal for witnesses.

HSBC in North Street, Brighton, was closed on Saturday, with the bank apologising to customers who wanted to visit the branch.

Images show the building covered in a red substance and cracked windows.

An HSBC UK spokesperson said: “Our aim is to get back open and running as quickly as possible.”

Figures show that the total cost of the all-important Christmas dinner is up 5% on a year ago, with the price of important elements such as pigs in blankets and stuffing up by 7%.

With the cost of living still biting, however, a supermarket price war is taking some of the sting out of high food costs – with Aldi and Lidl selling the ingredients for a main Christmas meal for eight for less than £12.

According to exclusive data prepared for Guardian Money by the analysts Assosia, the price of a frozen extra-large turkey is up 10p a kilogram to £3.70 (a 3% rise on a year ago) – which for an 8kg bird works out at £29.60. Meanwhile, a pack of supermarket own-label pigs in blankets is up 19p at £2.88. Lots of us will be paying quite a bit more for gravy this year: a 190g tub of Bisto gravy granules is up 35p – or 13% – at £2.95. In 2022, it was £2. And a 170g box of Paxo sage and onion stuffing mix is up 17p to £2.57. Compared with 2022, that’s a 51% increase.

However, there is some good news, with price falls for items such as potatoes and yorkshire puddings – down 2p to £1.84 for a 2kg bag of maris piper spuds, and a 14p reduction to £1.11 for a bag of frozen yorkshires. Overall, says Assosia, the total cost of nine key food items is up 5% on last year. These prices are based on the pre-promotion price across four supermarkets: Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Asda and Morrisons.

Christmas is always an expensive time and, after several years of rising living costs, budgets are tight in many households this year. The last set of official data measured UK inflation at 3.6% in October. But while gas and electricity bills are rising at a slower pace than a year earlier, food price inflation accelerated to 4.9%.

One of the UK’s largest annual studies of festive spending, saving and lifestyle trends found Britons were aiming to save money where they could.

Important findings of the big Christmas survey by Park Christmas Savings include that more than a third of people will not be sending physical cards in part because of higher postage costs, with cuts extending to the Christmas table, too. One-in-three households have now adopted budget-friendly food swaps, choosing supermarket-own brands or simplifying their menusto keep festive costs under control, according to the poll of 5,000 households.

Supermarkets go all out on deals

With supermarket bosses aware that money is tight, a promotional blitz has begun in the aisles, with about one-in-three products on the shelf on special offer.

“It is likely to be the most promotional Christmas we’ve seen in the 2020s,” says Fraser McKevitt, the head of retail and consumer insight at the market research firm Worldpanel.

The competitive environment is fuelling a tit for tat in the “Christmas dinner wars”, with Aldi and Lidl going head-to-head to attract cost conscious shoppers.

Giles Hurley, the Aldi chief executive, has thrown down the gauntlet with a pitch to sell the “UK’s lowest-price Christmas dinner”. He says the retailer wants to take the “guesswork out of affordability” by offering the lowest prices now on Christmas dinner veggies, turkey and the trimmings.

Aldi is selling a “full festive feast” for eight for £11.75, or £1.47 a head. The most expensive component is the 3kg fresh British turkey, at £9 (£2.95 a kg), but it is charging pennies for the veg – a tactic that has been criticised by growers – with the potatoes (2kg), brussels sprouts (500g), carrots (1kg) and parsnips (500g) all priced at 8p. (This deal runs from 19 to 24 December.)

McKevitt says: “The supermarkets are really conscious that people are struggling with the cost of living and want to be able to talk about having the cheapest offer for Christmas.”

Frozen or fresh turkey?

Worldpanel also tracks prices, and by its measure, the data shows that the average cost of a Christmas dinner for four people has fallen by a penny to £32.46.

Its analysis showed that the cost of a frozen turkey, the most expensive component of an average Christmas dinner, has fallen by 4% to £13.52. However, the cost of all the trimmings has risen: the price of four portions of potatoes has risen 1% to £1.67, cranberry sauce has increased by 10% to 86p, and stuffing mix is up by 7% to 96p.

With UK poultry producers battling a “bad season” of bird flu that has affected supplies of Christmas birds, many will be surprised to read headlines about cheaper, albeit frozen, birds.

Paul Kelly, the managing director of KellyBronze, which produces free-range turkeys in Essex, says the picture is being distorted by supermarket price cuts. “It’s not that the cost hasn’t gone up. It’s because retailers are sacrificing margin – they’re loss-leading.

“We gave up trying to compete with that years ago because they are losing a fortune on turkeys. The rationale is that they’re going to attract people in to buy the rest of their shop if they sell the turkey cheap.”

While on some measures you may be able to pick up a frozen turkey that is a bit cheaper than last year, about 70% of Britons opt for a fresh one. With the quality of the bird an important concern for many households, the average KellyBronze customer spends £95-£100.

Kelly says higher business taxes and labour costs contributed to a 4.8% increase in running expenses this year, and it has no option but to pass that on to customers. “We can’t afford not to.”

Retailers up game on own-label ranges

With Worldpanel putting annual grocery price inflation at 4.7% in November, McKevitt says: “People are trading down. They’re broadly buying the same volume of food but choosing cheaper items.”

For many shoppers this means swapping big brand names for cheaper supermarket own-label items. With this in mind, the big supermarkets have been investing in their top-end, own-label brands – such as Tesco Finest and Sainsbury’s Taste the Difference – so people can still feel as if they are treating themselves.

Given the horse-trading required to balance family budgets, analysts say savvy consumers need more than ever to shop around for the best deals – and best-tasting products.

For the latter, it is worth consulting the festive taste tests conducted by the Good Housekeeping Institute (GHI) and Which?, as well as the Guardian reviews site The Filter.

This year, for some traditional Christmas foods such as mince pies, low-cost brands have triumphed over more expensive stores.

After testing almost 700 festive foods, GHI crowned Waitrose the overall winner, with its £14 No.1 Pistachio & Cherry Stollen Wreath and £3 No.1 Golden Mince Pies with Limoncello (which judges said offered the “acidic kiss of a zippy lemon liqueur”) among the standouts.

But no-frills rival Asda finished second with a handful of wins, including for its Exceptional by Asda Yule Log (£5.47) and Heritage Slate Turkey Crown (£50.04/2kg) and praise for its wines. In the fiercely contested “classic” mince pie category Iceland came out on top with its £3 Luxury All Butter Mince Pies.

Callum Black, the GHI’s deputy head of testing, says festive meals are being shaped by cost of living pressures, and it has noted the rise of “cost-conscious alternative meats for Christmas lunch”.

Black says: “Although it’s not uncommon to see a big, glazed gammon on the menu, we’re seeing the emergence of high-quality large cuts of pork, from trimmed racks to sirloins, making for a value-focused but utterly delicious option that’s just as good cold in a Boxing Day sandwich.”

Katherine Scott, the director of marketing for Park Christmas Savings, sums up the mood: “What we’re seeing across the board is a more thoughtful, more intentional Christmas. Women, who continue to shoulder most of the planning and budgeting, are finding smart ways to keep the season joyful while staying in control of costs.”

The group joined through the leading edge airline preparation (LEAP) programme after they gained their commercial pilots licence, an industry-leading integrated pilot training course that prepares aspiring aviators for a full professional career.

Andy McFarlane, CEO of Leading Edge Aviation, said: “To get to a Dreamliner, or any other long-haul aircraft, can take five or six years with most airlines.

“Typically, pilots will spend several years on short-haul fleets before moving across.

“With this programme, these cadets are as much as three years ahead of everyone else, which is a truly remarkable advantage,” he explained.

The Calpe House Trust has received a donation of £10,000 from Gibraltar-based gaming company, Pragmatic Play.

Calpe House says this is the first payment in Pragmatic Play’s second three-year commitment to supporting the charity, after the successful completion of its initial three-year partnership.

It says this continued support helps Calpe House provide a home from home for patients and their families, adding since opening its new building, Calpe House has welcomed over 14,000 patients and their companions.

The Calpe House Trust also received a £5,000 donation from Hassans, as an additional contribution on top of the firm’s annual sponsorship of £10,000.

Chairman of the Trust, Albert Poggio, said the firm has been a corporate sponsor of theirs for nine years, and that Hassans’ support has been instrumental in helping Calpe House maintain and strengthen its home from home environment for patients and families. 

A revamp of train timetables has come into effect across the country, involving some of the most significant changes for more than seven years.

Rail operators are promising more services across the network and faster journeys on some routes as a result of the changes, with the East Coast Main Line to benefit the most.

Passengers are being advised to check the new timetables before travelling.

The level of change has not been seen since May 2018 when an update sparked major disruption and cancellations on some routes.

Rail timetables are changed every May and December, but rarely to this degree.

Network Rail is promising quicker journeys and thousands of extra seats every day, following a £4bn investment over the past decade.

The changes promise a cut of 15 minutes to journey times between London King’s Cross and Edinburgh, and 10 minutes between Edinburgh and York.

Network Rail says the rail line, which is used by several operators, will have improved connectivity between Scotland, North East England, Yorkshire and London.

One of the companies using the line, LNER, called the changes “transformational” and said it expected to run 10,000 additional services per year.

Ellie Burrows, Eastern regional managing director for Network Rail, said: “The industry has been preparing for many years for the new timetable.

“Our priority now is to continue working together to deliver the long-term benefits of this timetable change, the biggest in over a decade, for our passengers and the communities we serve.”

The changes will also see Northern launch a new hourly fast service between Leeds and Sheffield.

Transport for Wales is introducing more services for Chester, Wrexham and Swansea.

Another operator, Avanti, says there will be more trains between London and Liverpool.

However, there will be cuts to some routes as well. Avanti is cutting the number of services between Blackpool and London from four to two.

The changes are the biggest since May 2018 when a timetable update led to weeks of chaos on the Govia Thameslink Railway (GTR) and Northern networks.

The number of trains cancelled each day by GTR and Northern hit up to 470 and 310 respectively.

That led to a full review and eventually the Labour government’s decision to create Great British Railways and bring the industry under state control.

Travel expert Simon Calder said he was “pretty confident we won’t see the complete collapse of a network, as we did when the Thameslink line had its timetable completely reconfigured in 2018 – that was an absolute shambles”.

“There has been an awful lot of thought and time that has gone into this and the whole idea is to extract the maximum possible capacity from Britain’s Victorian rail network without jeopardising reliability.”

Rail industry expert Tony Miles told the BBC’s Broadcasting House programme that the changes in May 2018 had been based on “using every available slot for a train on the network, and that was the mistake”.

“You need to have some wriggle room” for when things go wrong, he added.

However, Monday morning would be the “real challenge” for the new system, Mr Miles said.

“Obviously Sunday morning services aren’t quite as stressful for the system as a peak time on a weekday.”

What’s the story

Microsoft has signed a deal to buy 3.6 million metric tons of carbon removal credits from a new bioenergy facility being built by C2X in Louisiana.
The plant, slated to open in 2029, will convert forestry waste into methanol for aviation and shipping or as a feedstock for the chemical industry.
It will produce over 500,000 metric tons of methanol annually and capture about one million metric tons of carbon dioxide for secure geological storage.

GWR is advising those travelling this Christmas to book in advance and to try to travel at quieter times for the best experience.

To avoid busy trains, the rail network has the following advice:

• Services are expected to be busiest on 22, 23 December and 27, 28 December.

• Travel as early as you can for the most comfortable journey. Services between 1000 and 1400 GMT will be most in demand.

• Please be aware that rail services will shut down earlier on Christmas Eve. Check your journey in advance.

• As usual, no train services will operate on Christmas Day and Boxing Day.

From 27 December to 4 January, track renewal work will affect some train services to/from London Paddington and trains will run to an amended timetable because only two out of four tracks will be available.