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Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.

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The Clifton Suspension Bridge Trust are celebrating the prestigious award of Accredited Museum status by Arts Council England, a UK-wide benchmark recognising that the Trust meets the highest standards of management, education, care and access to their historic collections.

To celebrate the new Museum Accreditation status, the Trust is relaunching the Visitor Centre located on the Leigh Woods side of the bridge as the ‘Clifton Suspension Bridge Museum’ and unveiling a new brand.

Open to the public 7 days a week, the museum welcomes tens of thousands of visitors each year. Inside, visitors can discover objects from the museum collections and learn how the bridge was constructed and is maintained today. Free and ticketed tours run throughout the year, in addition to children’s activities for families and school groups.

The Museum Accreditation application process took approximately three years, during which time the Trust’s Archivist worked to ensure important documents, drawings, photographs and objects were properly catalogued, preserved and made accessible to the public. Many of the items can already be viewed online, with more exciting projects to follow before Christmas.

Bridge Master Trish Johnson said, “We are thrilled to announce Museum Accreditation for our heritage site. This award represents our commitment to preserving the rich heritage of our bridge. Ultimately, we aim to continue sharing captivating stories for present and future generations.”

Museum Archivist Dr Hannah Little added, “We are really pleased to achieve Museum Accreditation. While Clifton Suspension Bridge is familiar to many, our museum and its collections are less well known – these tell us how the bridge was seen, built and used in the past, enabling people to see Bristol’s famous landmark in new and different ways. It is important to preserve and share these objects and stories for the benefit of the public.”

COSTCO is selling a “fantastic” £21 gadget that will keep you warm throughout the winter – and is even cheaper than the Aldi version.

And, the simple, budget-friendly item could even save you money on your heating bills.

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The Berkshire Life Heated Throw, a cosy electric blanket, is on sale on the Hot UK Deals website for a modest £21.58.

On the Costco website, it is listed for a reasonable £23.98.

Electric blankets work by having electrical wires embedded in the fabric.

The Costco version is made from faux fur, with a velvety underside, designed to keep you extra warm in the winter months.

It has four heat settings and a four-hour shut off setting to mitigate overheating or fire risks.

It is available in brown, grey and dark teal colours and is even machine washable.

How does it compare to other electric blankets?

The comforting throw is even cheaper than Aldi’s version, which retails for £29.99.

This Ambiano Heated Throw, which has nine settings, comes in a snowy white, cool grey, and toasty charcoal.

It is also cheaper’s than Asda‘s £30 electric teddy fleece.

However, shoppers looking to cut costs even further could opt for an £18.99 version on Amazon.

On the other end of the spectrum, Lakeland offers an £84.99 electric blanket, with The White Company version coming in at £150.

How much can you save on your electricity bill?

With heating costs being a hot topic of conversation this year, these blankets could be a solution to keeping those bills down.

Many homes are set to be subjected a detrimental change in their energy bill as the cold snap approaches, with some set to rise by £149 each year.

Electric blankets generally run at only a few pence per hour, while opting for cooler settings can further reduce costs.

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free

Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.

UK chancellor Rachel Reeves has announced plans to raise rents for social housing by more than inflation over the next five or 10 years while also providing an immediate £500mn cash injection for housing associations and councils to boost affordable home building. 

Reeves intends to introduce a formula in next week’s Budget that will increase annual rents in England by the consumer price index measure of inflation — currently 1.7 per cent — plus an additional 1 per cent. 

The chancellor will issue a consultation in Wednesday’s fiscal setpiece looking at introducing this as a long-term settlement. The Treasury said it would be looking at a five-year CPI+1 deal, but added: “The consultation will also seek views on other potential options to give greater certainty, such as providing a 10-year settlement.”

The move is designed to stimulate the building of more affordable homes by providing certainty over cash flow for heavily indebted housing associations and councils. The government sets rent levels in subsidised social housing on the basis of a national formula. 

At the same time Reeves will announce an additional £500mn for the Affordable Homes Programme, an existing £11.5bn five-year scheme allocating money to housing authorities and councils to build new homes. 

Angela Rayner, the deputy prime minister who is also secretary of state for housing, had held out during intense spending-round negotiations with the chancellor early this month to garner more money for the AHP.

Reeves also said she would use the spending review to set out the details of new investment for affordable housing for when the existing programme runs out in 2026.

“We need to fix the housing crisis in this country. It’s created a generation locked out of the property market, torn apart communities and put the brakes on economic growth,” she said.

In recent years local authorities have delivered only a trickle of new homes, leaving housing associations — not-for-profit organisations — to build most new social housing. 

Guaranteeing higher rents will please housing associations but could prompt a backlash from millions of tenants while landing the government with a much higher benefits bill. 

A previous Conservative administration made a similar promise in 2012 with a decade-long rent settlement based on the retail price index plus 0.5 per cent, but this was ripped up in 2015 to save money on housing benefits. A similar five-year deal in 2020 was temporarily dropped when inflation spiked in 2022. 

Guaranteeing certainty on rents was a critical demand of 20 of the UK’s largest local council landlords who published a report this summer warning that England’s council housing system was “broken”. 

The chancellor will also confirm plans to cut discounts on “right-to-buy” deals — where tenants buy a council property they have been renting. At the same time councils will be able to retain 100 per cent of the receipts generated by such sales.

Ministers hope the net effect will be for local authorities to receive more money to build social housing while still allowing long-standing tenants to buy their own homes.

Polly Neate, chief executive of housing charity Shelter, said the funding boost was a welcome step given Britain’s “rocketing homelessness”.

“For decades we’ve lost more social homes than we’ve built, causing private rents to soar to record highs and the homeless accommodation bill to hit the billions,” she said.

SHOPPERS have been left baffled by a strange new addition to Aldi’s Christmas range – that would never normally be seen at Christmas.

The budget supermarket revealed the new range earlier this month, with customers calling the strange new item “cursed”.

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The hollow chocolate eggs, on sale for £1.99, seem more Easter-appropriate than Christmassy.

Riffing on the cross-seasonal concept, Aldi has playfully named them “Chreaster Eggs”.

The product, described as the “perfect stocking filler”, is available in red “Garry the Gingerbread Man” and blue “Parker the Penguin” versions.

Shoppers quickly rushed to social media to share their thoughts.

One celebrated the addition, saying on X: “I’ll take them all thank you!”

Another joked: “I love Aldi. Just when you think they can’t do better.”

They added: “This is so cursed I actually love it.”

However, others were more disturbed by the product, with one saying: “Eggs! Just no, Aldi. We all know that Christmas chocolate is either sphere, triangular, circular or hexagon shaped!”

Another cynic wrote: “I saw these in my Aldi on Saturday and I was so confused.”

Others have accused Aldi of not paying due regard to Christmas as a religious festival.

One said: “May as well cut the Christmas story short and ‘roll the stone away’ immediately with a Chreaster Egg, no point in prolonging it all.”

To this, Aldi replied: “We could turn the entire year into one big festive event.”

While others have jokingly suggested extending the chocolate eggs to Halloween too, saying: “Where are the Chreasterween eggs?”

Indulging in the online discussion, Aldi replied that its “final destination” was “Easumalloweemas eggs”.

Julie Ashfield, Managing Director of Buying at Aldi UK, said: “At Aldi we’re always looking for fun and creative ways to enhance our Christmas range.

“The ‘Chreaster egg’ trend has really taken off because it blends Easter’s most popular treat, the Easter Egg, with the beloved season of Christmas.

“Whether it’s a stocking filler or a conversation starter, we hope shoppers love our charming Dairyfine Hollow Character Eggs.”

How to save money on chocolate

WE all love a bit of chocolate from now and then, but you don’t have to break the bank buying your favourite bar.

Consumer reporter Sam Walker reveals how to cut costs…

Go own brand – if you’re not too fussed about flavour and just want to supplant your chocolate cravings, you’ll save by going for the supermarket’s own brand bars.

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Shop around – if you’ve spotted your favourite variety at the supermarket, make sure you check if it’s cheaper elsewhere.

Websites like Trolley.co.uk let you compare prices on products across all the major chains to see if you’re getting the best deal.

Look out for yellow stickers – supermarket staff put yellow, and sometimes orange and red, stickers on to products to show they’ve been reduced.

They usually do this if the product is coming to the end of its best-before date or the packaging is slightly damaged.

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Buy bigger bars – most of the time, but not always, chocolate is cheaper per 100g the larger the bar.

So if you’ve got the appetite, and you were going to buy a hefty amount of chocolate anyway, you might as well go bigger.