GLASTONBURY’S poshest ‘tent’ where guests can enjoy a luxury festival experience is taking bookings for 2025 from today – at a cost of £28k.

The team behind the luxury pop-up say bookings are at an ‘all time high for this stage of the year’ given the festival’s planned fallow year in 2026.

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The Tipi Tenthouse Suite offers up to five double bedrooms with a dining area and en-suite shower room which will set glampers back £27,999.

While on-site, guests can enjoy the bar, an a la carte restaurant, live performances and a spa complete with hot tubs, complimentary yoga sessions, a swimming pool, and saunas.

The site also works with Voler Aviation Services to offer helicopter charter flights and has a fleet of all-electric Audis to offer eco-friendly ground transport.

The luxury accommodation boasts a flushing toilet, a boujee carpeted floor for comfort and deckchairs for lounging outside.

Those who hate the camping part of the festival have a home away from home with wooden doors, a dining table and large windows.

The site lies a 10-minute walk from the festival’s pedestrian gate D.

Prices vary from £2,999 for a classic room, and the Tipi Tenthouse Suite is priced at £28k for up to 10 people – it features an en-suite shower room and a dining area and furnished living space.

It is billed as a place which will “allow you to share your experience with those closest to you whilst giving you your own space too”.

The rooms even come with mood lighting and car parking passes included so guests can skip the hassle of fighting in queues for somewhere to park.

Guests can also treat themselves to visiting the Wellness Spa for the hot tubs and a pool as well as a beauty salon offering booked treatments.

There is even a concierge service and 24 hour private security.

Mark Sorrill, Managing Director of The Pop-Up Hotel, explains: “Since launching in 2011 as the first luxury glamping accommodation, we’ve evolved to deliver an unparalleled festival experience for our hotel guests during Glastonbury matched with a 5* service found at any international boutique hotel.

“There’s certainly a reason why it’s a sell-out success every year.”

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Lex highlights a bone of contention for those of us who have gone alcohol-free (“It is all beer and skittles in the no-alco­hol drinks space”, September 23). Despite the advances in sales and taxes levied on alcoholic drinks, there is still a negligible price difference between no-alcohol drinks and their alcoholic equivalents.

Alcohol accounted for more than 10,000 UK deaths in 2022 and 343,000 hospital admissions. Given the NHS funding crisis, a sensible measure would be to work with manufacturers and retailers to incentivise and, if necessary, subsidise the production of no-alcohol drinks to make them discernibly cheaper than alcoholic ones. This would deliver sustainable savings to the NHS budget and improve overall health outcomes.

Milo Brett
London N15, UK

SAVING money for a rainy day or big purchase is no easy feat at the best of times, let alone when you’re battling against soaring bills with stagnant wages.

By the time food and household costs are met, many of us have barely anything left at the end of the month to save

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However, if you can bring your earnings up and the cost of living down, you will start to increase your disposable income which can be used for savings.

It sounds easier said than done, but the cash you earn each month, as well as living costs are heavily influenced by where in the UK you live.

It means that if you choose your location wisely you can start to increase the gap between wages and costs for the better – giving you more free cash to put into savings.

There are nine locations in the UK where the amount you’re paid is on average at least £1,000 more than living costs – see map above – according to research from property site Compare My Move.

The location with the highest gap between the cost of living and earnings is York.

The cost of both buying or renting a flat in the historic city  is low compared to other parts of the UK, and you can get on to the property ladder for around £198,093, found Compare My Move.

At the same time, the cost of living comes in at £1,415 while average earnings after tax are £2,846, leaving £1,431 of disposable income each month. 

Even if the cost of living is relatively high, you can still save if salaries are higher.

For example, in second place is Cambridge where the average salary is a bumper £3,143 while the cost of living is £1,829 meaning there is still £1,314 leftover.

And in third spot is Reading with the highest employability rate of any city or town in the UK with 86.1% of its residents in employment, according to Compare My Move.

In the South East, means buying a flat is more expensive than other locations at a typical £227,525. However, the average salary is competitive at £2,909 after tax, while the cost of living is £1,714 meaning that disposable income is still high at £1,195.

Wigan, Derby, Bolton and Glasgow are among other spots where there is a sizeable difference between earnings and costs – and some of the most underrated spots in the UK for young adults, according to Compare My Move.  

Of course, your earnings in any location will depend on other factors such as the job you do and the company you work for.

However, you can use job sites to see advertised salaries in your field across different locations and compare with your current earnings.

Costs will also depend on exactly where you choose to live but you can use a property site to look up rent or house prices in different locations to try to gauge how to create a bigger disposable income in your budget.

SAVING £1,000 A MONTH

If saving to buy a home is an important achievement for you, living in one of the locations on the list could help.

Putting away £1,000 a month after a year would give you £12,000. And after three years you could have £36,000 – enough for a 10% deposit on £360,000 property.

If you are going to start saving, it’s also important to keep your cash in a spot where it will earn the highest interest.

It’s also important to be able to access at least a month or two’s worth of income in an easy access account for emergency situations – such as a job loss.

You can currently earn as much as 5.2% in an easy access account with Ulster Bank if you have at least £5,000 in savings – you will earn 2.25% if you have less than that.

Or for smaller sums from £1 you can get a rate of 4.84% with app-based provider Chip.

On a lump sum of £12,000 you’d earn £580.80 worth of interest after a year at a rate of 4.84%.

Opting for as high rate of interest as possible helps you to achieve your savings goals faster. It also stops inflation eroding the value of your nest egg.

If you want to save regularly, you can rates of up to 7% with first direct. You will need to hold a current account with the bank but can then put away up to £300 a month over a year at the top rate.

A GREAT gran who won £166,666 says her husband will have to write a “begging letter” if he wants to see a single penny of it.

Gill English landed the cash on People’s Postcode Lottery in Rugby, Warwickshire – and is now planning a slap-up carvery dinner for her big family.

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The retired carer also said she is prepared to buy her hubby a new pair of shoes – but only once shes sees his “begging letter”.

Gill said: “Oh my God! Flippin’ heck! I’ll take the family to a carvery. I also said I’d buy Kev a new pair of shoes.

“He’ll have the begging letter written!”

Retired chauffeur Kev laughed: “I’ve already written the begging letter.”

The couple are both recovering from cancer.

Kev had melanoma and Gill is still receiving treatment after having part of her right lung removed.

But Gill said they are more interested in helping family – including her three sons, eight grandchildren and nine great grandchildren – than treating themselves.

She said: “I love buying presents and love doing things for people. It’s lovely when you feel you have done something for somebody.

“I love giving. I get great joy out of it. If you’ve got money, you’ve got it. If you haven’t, you haven’t.

“I’m not money motivated, but I am now! This is so lovely. Thank you.”

Gill also revealed she hadn’t told her hubby that she played Postcode Lottery until she got the call to say she’d won.

She said: “Kev didn’t know I even played; I don’t tell him everything. I hadn’t told anyone except my youngest son.

“I’ll never get any sleep now just working it all out.”

Kev said: “It wasn’t a secret, she just never told me.”

How to enter the People’s Postcode Lottery

• The Postcode Lottery is a subscription-based lottery in which players sign up with their postcode.
• Your postcode is your ticket number – 40p a day ensures entry into all drawers, or £12 a month.
• Once subscribed, they are automatically entered into every draw.
• Prizes are announced every day of the month.
• If your postcode gets luck, every player in your postcode wins.
• 33 per cent of the ticket price will go to charity that is re-funnelled back into the community.

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free

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

The number of companies going public in Australia is at its lowest since the global financial crisis 15 years ago, leaving a Mexican fast-food chain as the biggest listing in a market once buzzing with new mining and energy stocks.

The 12 initial public offerings so far in 2024 on the Australian stock exchange have raised just $371mn, according to data provided by LSEG, the lowest year-to-date levels since 2009 and little more than a quarter of the historic average since the turn of the century.

The dearth is being partly blamed on Australia’s uncertain economic outlook. Growth has faltered and interest rates have been kept high to tackle stubborn inflation.

Also to blame is voracious competition from private capital for assets, exemplified by the A$24bn (US$16bn) takeover of former IPO candidate AirTrunk by Blackstone this month.

Larger companies have paused potential floats hoping for more stable conditions, said Marcus Ohm, a partner at HLB Mann Judd, which compiles an annual report on Australia’s new listings market. “There’s no certainty” on valuation, he said, adding: “It’s a cyclical market and it’s been a bit of a ‘wait and see’ mentality.”

The only listing of significant size this year has been of burrito chain Guzman y Gomez, which raised A$335mn at a valuation of A$2.2bn in June. The chain was founded by New Yorkers Steven Marks, who previously worked at Steve Cohen’s hedge fund SAC Capital, and his childhood friend Robert Hazan, who spied an opportunity to build a Mexican-themed fast-food chain in Australia in 2006.

The market capitalisation of the company, which also operates in Japan and the US, has rapidly risen to A$4bn as investors have bought into its growth plans. That has encouraged some other companies to dust off their listings plans.

A more esoteric IPO is expected from Western Australia’s Good Earth Dairy, which wants to turn wild camels’ milk into ice cream and baby formula. Having called off listings in 2020 and 2022, it has started talks with potential cornerstone investors, hoping to raise A$20mn.

Milk from Australia’s 1mn feral camels has fewer allergens than other dairy products and could be used in exports to China and the Middle East, according to chief executive Marcel Steingiesser.

Yet ASX, the stock exchange operator, needs a bigger pipeline of larger companies to follow in Guzman y Gomez’s wake.

The lack of IPOs comes despite a surge in Australian equity markets, with the ASX benchmark index hitting record highs this week.

It is also at odds with the huge demand for investable assets from institutions including Australia’s A$4tn pension fund sector. Aware Super, the country’s third-largest pension fund, acted as a cornerstone investor for Guzman y Gomez.

James Posnett, general manager of listings at ASX, said demand from institutional investors was “the loudest it has been” in his 12 years with the exchange.

The ASX also pointed to a string of capital raising by listed companies as a testament to the strength of investor appetite. NextDC, a data centre rival to AirTrunk, has raised A$2.7bn in the past 18 months by issuing new shares. “There’s a lot of money looking for a home,” Posnett said.

A slump in prices of commodities including lithium has stemmed the usual steady flow of small-cap mining listings, although CleanTech Lithium — which operates in Chile and is already listed on London’s junior AIM market — is to raise up to A$20mn with a secondary listing in the coming weeks.

Rob Jahrling, head of equity capital markets at Citigroup in Sydney, said institutional and retail investors were keen for the IPO market to reopen after a number of large listed Australian companies — such as technology company Altium — were taken over and delisted in recent years. “There’s not enough listings to redeploy that capital,” he said. “The universe has shrunk.”

Significant activity is not tipped to pick up until later in the year or early 2025, when the bigger listings are most likely to be by companies that have halted floats in recent years due to market conditions.

They include payments company Cuscal, which is partly owned by Mastercard, and airline Virgin Australia, owned by Bain Capital, have both been tipped to revive stalled IPO plans before the end of the year by investment bankers. 

Karen Chan, a fund manager at Perennial Private Investors, said Guzman y Gomez’s strong performance had “piqued the interest” of shareholders looking for brands with global potential. “The IPO option is now on the table,” she said. “There is demand for high-quality companies.”

Jahrling also said the success of Guzman y Gomez provided “a blueprint and confidence” for other companies. But he added that competition from venture capital, infrastructure funds and pension funds to invest in high-growth companies could yet intensify, as was the case with AirTrunk. “I don’t think that [competition] is going away,” he said.