With the new budget out a few weeks ago and the end of the year fast approaching we thought what a great time to take a look at the key points and how they can and may affect you moving into 2022.

I checked out a few different sources to gather the main points for you, they are all referenced below (as we have to!)

Firstly, I thought it’s important to to note a really really positive change that has been made, this is that in April 2022 the National Living Wage will be increasing next year by 6.6%, to £9.50 an hour,, along with;

• Permanently cutting the Universal Credit taper rate by 8% from 63p to 55p, ensuring that those that are working and in receipt of this benefit are not ‘penalised’ for working more.
• A 50% business rates discount for the retail, hospitality, and leisure sectors in England in 2022-23, up to a maximum of £110,000, a great boost for these businesses that were impacted the most during the pandemic
• Planned rise in fuel duty to be cancelled amid the highest pump prices in eight years
• Young people and apprentices will also see pay increases as the National Minimum Wage rates will also increase next April. 
• Alcohol duties will be frozen across the board for the third year running saving consumers around £3 billion.

I think these changes will hopefully have a really positive impact on a familys ‘bottom line’, meaning that we will be able to afford to start saving that little bit more and if we can all save more this inturn helps pay off any debts and improve our credit rating (here at ScoresMatter we love anything that will improve your credit score!)

That’s not all,  there will also be an additional investment of £170 million in 2024-25 to increase the hourly rate to be paid to early years providers to deliver the government’s free childcare hours, something really positive for those with younger children. 

I think this brings  us on nicely onto some of the housing and community changes that will be coming into effect, in summary (I took this from the BBC and .gov website as I really like the easy to read and digest bullet points on this topic):

• £24bn is earmarked for housing, including £11.5bn for up to 180,000 affordable homes, with brownfield sites targeted for development.
• 4% levy will be placed on property developers with profits over £25m to help create a £5bn fund to remove unsafe cladding.
• £640m a year to address rough sleeping and homelessness.
• £560 million new funding for youth services in England over the next three years, enough to fund 300 youth clubs.
• £205 million new funding to build or transform up to 8,000 state-of-the-art community football pitches across the UK.
• Allocation of the first 21 projects to benefit from the £150 million Community Ownership Fund, which will help communities across the UK protect and manage their most treasured assets, from building the John Jenkins Stadium in Portsmouth to acquiring the Old Town Hall as part of a new museum development in Whithorn in Scotland, supporting the Ty’n Llan pub in Llandwrog in Wales, and developing a new community digital hub in Cushendall in Northern Ireland.

Not only have the government done this but they have also released the following improvements for schools and education too, which then ties in nicely with point 1, the more we invest in our children’s futures and education the more likely that are to be able to start earning at a minimum, the minimum wage and save for a better and brighter future. 

• Schools to get an extra £4.7bn by 2024-25
• There will be nearly £2bn of new funding to help schools and colleges to recover from the pandemic
• Schools funding to return to 2010 levels in real terms – an equivalent per pupil cash increase of more than £1,500
• £300m will be spent on a “Start for Life” parenting programmes, with an additional £170m by 2024-25 promised for childcare
• A UK-wide numeracy programme will be set-up to help improve basic maths skills among adults
• New investment of £1.6 billion for 16–19-year olds’ education in England. This will maintain funding in the face of demographic growth and provide additional hours for learners who take T Levels.

Now onto the more scary stuff, the economic growth of our country, these figures feel very different to what I have read in the news so hopefully seeing them in a bullet point style may also be helpful;

• Inflation in September was 3.1% and is likely to rise to average 4% over next year, OBR says
• UK economy forecast to return to pre-Covid levels by 2022
• Annual growth set to rebound by 6.5% this year, followed by 6% in 2022
• Unemployment expected to peak at 5.2% next year, lower than 11.9% previously predicted
• Wages have grown in real terms by 3.4% since February 2020
• Borrowing as a percentage of GDP is forecast to fall from 7.9% this year to 3.3% next year
• Borrowing as a percentage of GDP will then fall in the following four years to 1.5%
• Foreign aid spending projected to return to 0.7% of GDP by 2024-25

Now by all means this blog post may seem a little like a love note to the conservative party, but I am certainly not biased and am aware that some changes  have been made in policy that may have contributed to them having to address this funding and now increase it. 

But I wanted this to be a positive blog about what the current government is trying to do for a better future for us all and to keep politics aside (as trust me, my political knowledge is really not up to scratch for a debate!) I hope I have done so and enabled you to see that perhaps there may be a glimmer of hope for us all despite what some of the tabloids have reported.  When you do break down how our finances may be looking in 2022 it could be a new year for us all in more than one way.

References: 

Autumn Budget 2021: Key points at-a-glance – BBC News

Budget and Spending Review – October 2021: What you need to know – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)