After the Covid-19 pandemic, people in the United Kingdom flocked to cottages and the idyllic lifestyle, but the boom has now gone bust.

Simple pension transfers in the UK took an average of 10 days over the year to 31 March, the quickest the industry has managed in nearly two years.

The government opened a consultation on Friday (14 August) asking manufacturers, suppliers, charge point operators, dealers and drivers how the UK should reach its 2030 phase-out of new petrol and diesel cars.

Sales of UK homes worth £1 million or more fell 7% in the first half of 2026 as buyers pulled back in the face of higher borrowing costs and the prospect of tax changes, estate agency Savills said in its half-year results on Thursday (13 August).

Overseas bidders accounted for 86% of all UK takeover activity by value in the first half of 2026, up from 75% at the same point last year and the highest share on record.

Pershing Square Holdings bought into S&P Global after the launch of an Anthropic AI product helped knock more than a quarter off the company's share price.

Uber riders in the UK can now record audio during any trip and send it to the company's Safety Support team as part of an incident report.

Monzo is increasing the price of its Max + Family plan from £22 to £23 a month on 25 October, and adding YouTube Premium Lite to the bundle.

Finance firms should prohibit AI systems that manipulate or exploit customers outright, according to new research from Durham University Business School.

Landlords are selling up in greater numbers since the Renters' Rights Act 2025 took effect, shrinking the supply of rental homes and driving rents upwards, estate agency Savills said on Thursday (13 August).

The government has set a 24-week deadline for the First-tier Tribunal to decide asylum and immigration appeals from non-detained foreign national offenders and people receiving asylum support and accommodation.

The Department for Work and Pensions will bring forward benefit payments due on the August bank holiday to Friday (28 August).

More than 150 government-funded 4G mast upgrades have gone live across the UK through the Shared Rural Network, bringing coverage from EE, Virgin Media O2 and VodafoneThree to some of Britain's hardest-to-reach rural areas.

Zero-hour job adverts attract around 20% more applicants than similar fixed our roles at the same employer, new government published research shows.

Some disruption is expected to London Underground and Overground services this weekend, including part closures on the Elizabeth line.

Families inheriting a UK pension from April 2027 could face an effective tax rate of up to 64% after HMRC set out plans to deny pension assets several inheritance tax reliefs available elsewhere in an estate.

Two of the S&P 500's 24 sectors delivered close to 85% of the index's gains in the first half of 2026, according to Pershing Square Holdings.

Internet Services Provider TalkTalk shed an estimated 766,000 customers in the second quarter of 2026 on the back of continued restructuring and offloading assets.

London-listed landlord CLS Holdings has announced that it is converting or selling several of its London office buildings for residential property development.

Ofwat has proposed allowing Severn Trent Water, Southern Water, Thames Water, Wessex Water and South East Water to recover additional costs from customers, pushing bills up from April 2027.

Here's what the latest generation of Pixel 11 smartphones will cost in the United Kingdom.

London's Cycleway network is now five times larger than it was in 2016 and stretches further than the distance to Paris.

New research from Point Topic shows that the cheapest entry-level full fibre broadband package in the UK is just £16 a month.

Almost 20,000 students in England collected T Level results on Thursday (13 August), up from around 12,000 in 2025, with more than 90% passing.

Betting company William Hill held 1,024 shops at the end of June 2026, down from 1,302 a year earlier.

Rental agency Spareroom has named Bootle in Merseyside the most competitive place in the UK to rent a room in the UK, with an average of 12.5 renters enquiring for every room in the city.

The scheme ending means that the hotels are free to take paying guests again or convert to other uses.

New data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) shows that Information and Communication output rose 2.7% in the second quarter of 2026. This was the strongest growth of the 14 service subsectors.

The first official flagship Harry Potter store on Oxford Street will open on 4 November 2026.

Property group Balfour Beatty has confirmed that it is delivering enabling works on the new Lower Thames Crossing, but that main construction on the development has stalled until private financing is secured.

Prime Minister Andy Burnham has indicated that he will give further relief to businesses in his inaugural budget at the end of October

The government has announced a £22 million plan to replace animal testing with lab-grown human organs for medical research purposes.

HMRC has warned taxpayers that the first quarterly update deadline for Making Tax Digital has now passed.

UK homeowners are losing an average of £33,597 by listing their homes for too much money, new data from the We Buy Any Home and Tytl shows.

Households living within 500 meters of new or recently upgraded pylons will be given discounts of around £2,500 over the next 10 years as part of a government scheme.

IHG Hotels & Resorts has put its 7,109 hotels inside AI tools built by Google and OpenAI in a bid to make booking a hotel easier.

Genuit Group, the UK's biggest maker of pipes, announced double-digit price increases in the first half of 2026 its half-year results published on Tuesday (11 August).

Housebuilder Bellway has called on the government to cut stamp duty immediately and set-up a state-backed deposit scheme for first-time buyers.

Hiring firm Robert Half expect the UK to see a wave of firms rehiring employees it had previously let go as part of a wave of AI-based correction.

The majority of senior executives at UK companies say that AI has made it impossible to estimate how much office space is needed for their workers.

Hotel prices in the UK are climbing on rate rather than demand, and there is little sign of new rooms being added to ease capacity constraints.

Young men in the UK spent six and a half hours a day alone in 2023, two hours more than in 2014-15, according to Resolution Foundation research published on Wednesday (12 August).

A graduate earning £30,000 faces a marginal tax rate of 37%, against 20% for someone above State Pension age on the same income.

Anthropic has announced that its Claude models will begin inserting invisible watermarks into AI-generated text, making it easier for people to check if what they are reading has been AI-generated.

Civil rights advocacy group Big Brother Watch has condemned the installation of Live Facial Recognition (LFR) cameras in London train stations, calling the expansion of this surveillance technology 'dystopian'.

British Transport Police (BTP) has begun trialling Live Facial Recognition (LFR) on the London Underground, using AI-assisted surveillance cameras to scan customers' faces in real time.

Farmers have reported their earliest harvests in 20 years, with reduced yields, after England recorded its driest July in 190 years.

Almost a third of UK gig goers aged 18 to 24 have been sold a fake ticket, according to new O2 research published as the government renews its Stop! Think Fraud campaign.

15 years of student loan repayments would build £36,000 for the typical graduate if invested in a Lifetime ISA instead, according to modelling published by the Intergenerational Foundation.

Every new shop selling e-cigarettes in England will need planning permission from its local council under government plans to change what can open on the high street.