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Growth in UK house prices and rents slows in July

The latest figures from the Office for National Statistics released this morning show that average house prices in the UK in July were 2.8% higher than a year earlier, down from 3.6% price growth in June.

Growth has slowed sharply since hitting a two-year high in March, when buyers rushed to complete sales before a tax break on house purchases expired.

Rents charged by private landlords rose by 5.7% year-on-year in August, down from an annual rate of 5.9% in July – the smallest annual increase since December 2022.

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Barratt Redrow warns of ‘tough market’ with limited growth in 2026

Britain’s largest housebuilder Barratt Redrow has warned of a “tough market” with limited growth expected in the coming year, and the late budget holding back the market amid uncertainty around property taxes.

Even so, the company raised its dividend after reporting a 34% increase in revenue to £5.6bn in the year to 29 June, following Barratt’s acquisition of Redrow last year.

Reporting its full-year results for the combined group for the first time, the builder highlighted difficult conditions in the housing market as it delivered 16,565 home completions, slightly below expectations. Adjusted profit before tax rose by 26.8% to £488.3m.

Its private weekly reservation rate in July and August was 0.55, down from 0.56 last year.

The group expects to complete between 17,200 and 17,800 homes this year, assuming a normal autumn selling season. However, it cautioned that “the extended period through to the budget and related uncertainties around general taxation and that applicable to housing, has introduced additional risk”.

David Thomas, the chief executive, said:

We have delivered a solid performance in a tough market, with adjusted profits ahead of expectations despite home completions coming in slightly below our guided range.

The acquisition of Redrow is transformative for the group, and I am pleased with the progress we have made on delivering synergies ahead of our targets and executing a successful integration, which is now largely complete.

He added that “the housing market remains challenging and we anticipate limited growth in 2026”.

The news comes a week after Vistry Group, another big housebuilder, said first-half profits more than halved as buyer demand comes under pressure from concerns over the economy, affordability struggles and slower-than-hoped interest rate cuts.

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Updated at 12.30 CEST

Trump’s tariffs have hurt tea exports to the US, says Fortnum & Mason boss

The boss of upmarket retailer Fortnum & Mason has said Donald Trump’s trade war has hit sales of its luxury tea exports to the US and forced up prices.

Tom Athron, the London-based retailer’s chief executive, said Trump’s stricter country of origin rules and the end of the “de minimis” cost exemption for parcels worth less than $800 (£587) had hit customers across the Atlantic.

“The American authorities have told us – this is the tea industry in its entirety – that if you’ve got tea from China and India in your tea, then its country of origin [is] China or India, and therefore those enormous tariffs apply,” he told the Financial Times.

Trump, who landed in the UK on Tuesday for an unprecedented second state visit for a US president, last month imposed a 50% tariff on imports from India as a punishment for buying Russian oil.

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Aldi reveals new store locations

Aldi has revealed some of the towns and cities where it is opening new stores as part of its £1.6bn expansion plan over the next couple of years.

On Monday, the UK’s fourth-largest supermarket said it plans to open 80 stores across 2026 and 2027 to meet the UK’s growing demand for affordable groceries. Aldi will also upgrade existing stories and develop its distribution network.

The retailer, which now has 1,060 stores, is aiming for 1,500 outlets across the UK. It said its expansion would create thousands of jobs and more opportunities for British suppliers.

Aldi store in Northwich. Photograph: Jason Cairnduff/Reuters

The locations for new stores include:

Amersham, Buckinghamshire

Northallerton, North Yorkshire

Hastings, East Sussex

Watford, Hertfordshire

Orpington, Greater London

Newport, South Wales

Ashford, Kent

Bishopbriggs, East Dunbartonshire

Edgware Road, London

Telford, Shropshire

Balsall Common, West Midlands

Willesden, London

Driffield, East Riding of Yorkshire

Hattersley, Greater Manchester

Egremont, Cumbria

Dudley, West Midlands

Dumbarton, West Dunbartonshire

Hanworth, Greater London

Exmouth, Devon

Yate, South Gloucestershire

Malton, North Yorkshire,

Newport, Isle of Wight

Kentish Town, London

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Updated at 10.42 CEST

Plan to slash US steel tariffs shelved hours before Donald Trump’s UK visit

A long-coveted deal to slash US steel and aluminium tariffs to zero was shelved on the eve of Donald Trump’s state visit to Britain, the Guardian has learned.

Ministers were poised to finalise a deal this week that would have reduced Trump’s tariffs on British steel to zero, according to government officials.

But that deal has been put on ice hours before the US president’s arrival in the UK, in what steel industry figures privately described as a major blow.

A government source said the deal would have secured 0% tariffs on just a small quota of British steel exports, prolonging uncertainty for the industry.

Instead, ministers are seeking to agree a permanent “guarantee” that US tariffs on British steel will not go above 25%. Other countries face tariffs of 50% on their steel exports.

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New headache for Rachel Reeves as OBR expected to lower productivity forecast

The Office for Budget Responsibility is expected to downgrade its key productivity forecast, the Guardian understands, setting Rachel Reeves on course to break her fiscal rules without significant action in the budget.

The government’s independent watchdog has carried out a “stocktake” of its forecast models over the summer, and Treasury officials privately acknowledge the result will inevitably be a weaker growth outlook.

One Treasury source said they expected the OBR to “kitchen sink it” – making a significant downward revision to productivity forecasts in one go rather than taking a more piecemeal approach.

Reeves will respond by pointing to the long-term weakness of productivity in the UK economy and promising to tackle it with a programme of investment.

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GSK’s announcement came after UK science minister Patrick Vallance told MPs on Tuesday that the UK is determined to resolve its standoff with the pharmaceutical industry and reverse a 10-year decline in NHS spending on medicines, after a string of other drugmakers cancelled projects worth nearly £2bn.

Lord Vallance, a former executive at drugmaker GSK, said the country needed to increase spending on medicines and reverse a decade of declining investment.

Vallance told the Commons science committee that he was “deeply concerned that there’s been a 10-year decrease in the investment and support for a vital industry”.

We are determined to solve this. This is not something [where] we’re sitting saying let’s watch the decline of the industry. That’s what’s happened for the past 10 years. We must not do that. We have to act. Now is a pivotal moment … to try to get this right.

Dr Zubir Ahmed, the new health under-secretary and a Scottish surgeon, said the UK needed to change its pricing models in recognition of new cutting-edge treatments, which are more expensive.

He told the science committee “how we deal with pricing is multi-layered”.

If we’re going to get a shift from sickness to prevention, the medicines of today that cure Hepatitis C, that turn HIV into a chronic disease, that stop you having heart attacks and strokes, are not the same medicines 20 or 30 years ago which were treating symptoms.

We have to look at medicines in a different light … and calculate the economic and clinical benefit on that basis.

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GSK to invest $30bn in US; reaffirms commitment to UK

GSK laid out plans on Wednesday to invest $30bn (£22bn) in research and supply chains in the US over the next five years, in an announcement timed to coincide with Donald Trump’s state visit to the UK.

This includes $1.2bn of new money to build an AI-powered biologics factory in Pennsylvania that will develop treatments for the lung disease COPD and asthma, as well as cancer. It will also fund the roll-out of AI across GSK’s existing five manufacturing sites in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Maryland and Montana. This will create hundreds of highly skilled jobs, on top of construction jobs, expanding GSK’s 15,000-strong US workforce.

GSK also reaffirmed its commitment to the UK. Its chief executive, Emma Walmsley, said:

Alongside the many longstanding and vital shared interests that connect the UK and the United States, is advancing life sciences to get ahead of disease. This week’s State Visit brings together two countries that have led the world in science and healthcare innovation. We are proud to be part of both.

Here in the UK, we continue to invest in a significant manufacturing base and more than £1.5bn in R&D every year.

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer in conservation with former CEO of Google, Eric Schmidt and Dame Emma Walmsley the CEO of GSK, during the International Investment Summit in London in October 2024. Photograph: Jonathan Brady/Reuters

Keir Starmer said GSK’s US investment “will change lives on both sides of the Atlantic”.

From new treatments for asthma and cancer to creating hundreds of highly skilled jobs, this major British investment into the US will change lives on both sides of the Atlantic, helping to accelerate the development of cutting-edge technologies to bring faster, more effective medicines to get ahead of disease.

It’s a powerful example of how UK–US collaboration is driving real-world impact – improving people’s health, creating opportunity and turbocharging growth.

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Ben & Jerry’s co-founder Jerry Greenfield quits accusing Unilever of silencing social mission

Ben & Jerry’s co-founder Jerry Greenfield has stepped away from the ice-cream brand after nearly 50 years, according to a post by the other founder, Ben Cohen.

Cohen’s post shared what he said was a letter from Greenfield in which he called it one of the “hardest and most painful decisions” he had ever made.

Greenfield accused Unilever of silencing the company, saying its independence to speak up on global issues was “gone”.

Ben Cohen, co-founder of Ben & Jerry’s, protests against the Magnum Ice Cream Company capital markets day outside a hotel in Grosvenor Square, in London on 9 September. Photograph: Shokirie Clarke/Reuters

Greenfield said:

If the company couldn’t stand up for the things we believed, then it wasn’t worth being a company at all.

The decision came despite a merger agreement meant to safeguard the brand’s social mission, Greenfield added.

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Official figures on Tuesday showed the jobs market cooled in July, while economic growth remains weak; adding to pressure on the Bank of England to consider a cut in rates. The ONS will provide updated figures for retail sales and the government finances on Friday. But analysts said concerns remained over stubborn inflation.

Martin Sartorius, the principal economist at the CBI business lobby group, said:

The monetary policy committee [MPC] looks set to keep interest rates unchanged tomorrow and, going forward, the MPC faces a delicate balance between signs of a cooling labour market and the risk of price pressures remaining stubbornly high.

UK inflation is higher than in the US, where it increased to 2.9% in August, and in the eurozone where it rose to 2.1%, just above the European Central Bank’s 2% target. The EU’s statistics office will release its final figures at 10am BST.

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Mel Stride, the shadow chancellor, said:

With borrowing costs hitting a 27-year high, working people and businesses are bracing for even more tax rises to pay for Labour’s mismanagement.

Here’s our full story:

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