As much as £5bn needed to revive UK’s struggling high streets, study finds

As much as £5bn is needed to revive ailing UK town and city centres, with areas including Bradford in Yorkshire, Newport in south Wales, and Blackpool in Lancashire having double the proportion of empty shops as London, a study has found.A report from the Centre for Cities thinktank showed that the health of high streets across the country has varied significantly, and called for authorities to focus on developing homes and high-paying jobs in central locations to increase local spending power.Retailers have called for a cut in business rates, lower employment taxes and cheaper parking fees to help revive high streets.The report found that reforming the “flawed” business rates system was not enough to revive high streets in struggling local economies as many properties already do not pay rates.Andrew Carter, the chief executive of Centre for Cities, said: “Our research shows the high street isn’t failing everywhere

Bank of England says UK banks can increase riskier mortgage lending; Nvidia becomes first $4tn company – as it happened

Newsflash: The Bank of England is recommending that lending rules are relaxed so that banks and building societies can issue more mortgages at high loan-to-income levels.The BoE’s Financial Policy Committee is recommending that individual lenders should be allowed to increase their share of lending at high LTIs to above the current limit of 15%.This could make it easier for borrowers to stretch themselves to afford a more expensive property.High loan-to-income loans are defined as those at a ratio above 4.5

UK government’s deal with Google ‘dangerously naive’, say campaigners

Google has agreed a sweeping deal with the UK government to provide free technology to the public sector from the NHS to local councils– a move campaigners have called “dangerously naive”.The US company will be asked to “upskill” tens of thousands of civil servants in technology, including in using artificial intelligence, as part of an agreement that will not require the government to pay. It is considered in Whitehall to be giving Google “a foot in the door” as the digitisation of public services accelerates.However, the agreement prompted concerns about the precariousness of UK public data potentially being held on US servers amid the unpredictable leadership of Donald Trump.The Department of Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) said Google Cloud, which provides databases, machine learning and computing power, had “agreed to work with the UK government in helping public services use advanced tech to shake off decades old ‘ball and chain’ legacy contracts which leave essential services vulnerable to cyber-attack”

Linda Yaccarino stepping down as CEO of Elon Musk’s X

The CEO of X, Elon Musk’s social network, announced on Wednesday she would resign.“After two incredible years, I’ve decided to step down as CEO of 𝕏,” Linda Yaccarino wrote.Musk replied to her tweet: “Thank you for your contributions.”The outgoing CEO said, “When @elonmusk and I first spoke of his vision for X, I knew it would be the opportunity of a lifetime to carry out the extraordinary mission of this company. I’m immensely grateful to him for entrusting me with the responsibility of protecting free speech, turning the company around, and transforming X into the Everything App

India cruise to victory in fourth T20 and seal historic series win over England

India made history at Old Trafford on Wednesday night by winning the fourth Twenty20 international by six wickets, sealing their first T20 international series victory in England.“This time, this team, this atmosphere, it’s magical,” Radha Yadav said. “We want to create something big going forward. We are going to dominate, no matter what.”England sit above India in the International Cricket Council’s T20 team rankings but the manner of this defeat suggests the rankings have not quite caught up with reality

India beat England by six wickets to win fourth women’s T20 and series – as it happened

Righto, my work here is done. Congratulations India. Plenty for England to ponder. Raf’s report will land shortly and we’ll be back in the morning. I think there’s a Test match on