WERA Hobhouse MP, Baroness Udin and Lord Foster of Bath are among scores of politicians to have signed an open letter calling for the government to make digital wills legally valid. Under the Wills Act 1837, a valid will must be made in writing and signed in the presence of two independent witnesses. The open letter forms part of My Last Wish, a new campaign launched by digital life vault SafeKeep, which argues that the current law is old-fashioned and shuts millions of people out of making a valid will. The campaign calls for secure, properly authenticated electronic wills to…

Written by Dr Annaëlle Hip Kam, Sustainability Scientist at Tunley Environmental Carbon pricing and emissions metrics have reshaped how financial markets assess environmental risk, influencing capital allocation, lending conditions and corporate strategy. Yet, this climate metric alone does not capture the full environmental spectrum of environmental risk embedded in today’s portfolios. While carbon markets have succeeded because emissions are uniform and tradable, this same logic obscures material risks linked to nature loss. By examining how financial activity both depends on and contributes to ecosystem degradation, this article shows that nature-related risk is endogenous to finance and partially non-diversifiable. Moving beyond carbon…

Xero is capturing the stories of young entrepreneurs to share how they began to engage with ‘the numbers’ more confidently Young people in the UK are reconsidering how they enter the world of work. Our latest research found that nearly three quarters (72%) are attracted to entrepreneurship, with only one in five young people (20%) planning a traditional career path. But there are barriers that are holding young people back from starting their own business – and it’s not for lack of wanting. Over a third (37%) say they’re held back by a lack of financial skills – more so…

Summer is a strange season for a lot of UK small businesses. Footfall shifts, spending habits change, and the things that work in November — hot drinks, cosy evenings in, gift purchases — simply stop working. Rather than treating the warmer months as a quiet patch to get through, many owners are using them to test small, low-risk additions to what they already sell. Done well, these additions don’t just plug a seasonal gap; they become permanent extra margin. Here are five approaches worth considering, all of which can be trialled without a big upfront investment or a change to…

LeadFly, a Watford web studio that builds websites for tradesmen, have published some original research tabout the wesbites of independent UK tradesman businesses. Of 788 independent tradesman businesses with a website on file, 71% of those sites returned no working page. Among the 29% that did load, 83% were not mobile friendly and 71% were not secure. Homeowners now find and judge a tradesman online before they ever pick up the phone. So we wanted a hard number for how the independent end of the trade actually looks on the web. We took 788 tradesman businesses that already had a…

Andy Burnham’s first speech as Prime Minister has placed regional growth, the re-industrialisation of Britain and tackling youth unemployment at the centre of his government’s agenda, with a commitment to spread economic opportunity “to every postcode in the land”. The new Prime Minister’s focus on empowering communities beyond London has drawn a mixed but broadly optimistic response from business leaders, who have called for action to support small businesses, reduce barriers to growth and create greater certainty for entrepreneurs. Kevin Fitzgerald, UK Managing Director at employment platform Employment Hero, said Burnham’s “Manchesterism” approach could provide a positive framework for regional…

Culture vs Legislation: Why the Small Business Protections Bill is only half the battle As the Government settles into its change of leadership, Ed Rimmer, CEO of independent SME lender, Time Finance, calls for a continued focus on the culture of late payment and more momentum for the Small Business Protections Bill, dubbed the toughest crackdown on late payment in over 25 years. The UK has been trying to legislate its way out of a late payment crisis for nearly three decades. From the original Late Payment of Conduct Debts Acts in 1998, to the creation of the voluntary Prompt…

Data released by the Insolvency Service shows that 3,280 directors have been disqualified since 2023, with more than half of all cases linked to the abuse of COVID-19 financial support. A total of 1,683 disqualifications, 55% of the figures, were related to cases involving the misuse of financial assistance during the pandemic in the UK, highlighting the impact on businesses due to directors improperly accessing or using government-backed support. While director disqualifications peaked in 2023/2024, with 1,222 cases recorded, the majority of disqualifications (3,054) were issued under Section 6 of the Company Directors Disqualification Act. This relates to unfit conduct by…

More than two-thirds (67%) of companies are concerned about a government led by Andy Burnham, a snapshot survey revealed today. DJH’s Future of Business report, which took the pulse of 200 owners from across the UK, paints a picture of further uncertainty with most owners sceptical about the prospect of growth under the new Prime Minister. When asked about their biggest concerns, three quarters of firms are worried about a rise in taxation, with nearly half (46%) viewing more red tape as another significant barrier to growth. The potential for a Number 10 in the North generated a divided response…

55% not prepared for new digital tax deadline on 7 August 40% stated new process made them more organised, 28% said it reduced last-minute tax stress 93% want to manage tax admin through their banking app or online banking  With just weeks remaining until the first Making Tax Digital (MTD) for Income Tax submission deadline, new research from Lloyds suggests more than half of small businesses (55%) still have work to do before they are ready to comply with the new rules. Based on HMRC estimates of the number of sole traders and landlords in scope, that could mean around…