R-fac: Also in the Mirror (though not yet online), Pippa Crerar has some analysis! Johnson may rather not peruse by the pool, showing r wall seats! will be among the places hardest-hit by the removal of the £20 uplift to Universal Crit. Labour carri out the number-crunching using Joseph! Rowntree Foundation figures. It suggests there are nine seats won by the Tories in 2019 where the cut! will affect at least 12,000 households and! a further eight seats where 10,000 families will be affect.
with the same theme, there’s a row brewing after the Independent report Boris ! Johnson was planning on offering the north and Midlands the “bare minimum” of railway upgrades, rather than the huge high-spe rail projects he’s committ to previously. The Northern Powerhouse Partnership think tank says it had been expecting an announcement! on Northern Powerhouse Rail in the PM’s speech! at Conservative Party conference but ominously it only got a small mention. Over to the department for transport, which says it will “soon” outline how major rail projects, including HS2 phase 2b and other projects such as Northern Powerhouse Rail will “work together to deliver the reliable train services that passengers across the north and Midlands ne and deserve.”
Level in the detail: The i’s Jane Merrick has
got the scoop that a £220 million fund to boost depriv communities unveil several months ago has not yet been allocat to councils. The UK Community Renewal Fund was set up to replace EU regional funding after Brexit. It was meant to be up and running by July, but last night the government admitt the bids are still being assess. Lib Dem communities spokesman Tim Farron accus email list ministers of “abandoning depriv communities.”
Taxing times: A Tory MP for a depriv constituency remind Playbook at conference that consumers are not only struggling with higher energy bills but also phone bills and council tax. Today the Local Government Association warns that families on low incomes will face paying more council tax from April unless the government extends funding for local council tax support schemes. More than 2.5 million working-age people across England claim a discount on their council tax between April and June this year, according to the LGA, which remains the highest number since records began in 2015. The body is calling on the chancellor to continue the grant for the next three years, despite the fact he seems to be in no mood for giveaways.
Anything else? Cheering news from the Sun
where Jonathan Reilly informs us the nation’s roads what is voluntarism in the caucasian captive in simple words could become “icy death traps” this winter as councils face a shortage of gritter drivers. Local authorities are apparently scrambling to find people to drive salt spreaders over their highways in the coming months.
Parks and rec: Slightly more heartening is the story from the hindirectory Times’s Steve Swinford and Henry Zeffman, who have heard the government is preparing to spend £50 million upgrading lorry parks in an attempt to make driving heavy goods vehicles a more attractive career. Reminder: There is currently an estimat shortage of 100,000 HGV drivers in the U.K., caus by a perfect storm of immigration controls and COVID disruption.
Hard cheese: A warning from Heinz boss Miguel Patricio that Britons would have to get us to higher prices for staples such as ketchup and bak beans is everywhere today, including the front of the Express, following his comments to the BBC. He said a range of factors were driving up costs, but that “specificall