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New towns are back. But can we still build them?

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Stevenage Museum was closed when I visited. But the church above it was open. St Andrew & St George, an airy Modernist concrete structure with a huge stained-glass window completed in 1966, the year England won the World Cup, was hosting a pantry to help locals out with a free cup of tea and a meal. The atmosphere was welcoming but restrained, a few people chatting, an older man eating a sandwich on his own, perched on a plywood pew.

Stevenage was once the future, a model for a new way of living. Its Modernism, mostly low-rise, functional and compact, looks almost quaint nowadays: an expression of a paternalistic era of state-sponsored building and council housing. In the 1950s, architects and urbanists came from all over the world to study the bold experiment that it embodied. Now it has become a kind of Modernist heritage, a version of a future that might have been.

Situated 27 miles north of London, Stevenage was the pioneering manifestation of the New Towns Act passed by parliament in 1946. It would be rapidly followed by Basildon and Bracknell, Corby and Crawley and, later, Runcorn, Ravenscraig, Cumbernauld and Telford — some successful, others a little less so. London had been devastated by bombing in the second world war, with more than a million dwellings damaged or destroyed, and the energetic new Labour government wasted no time in planning for a future dispersal of residents to beyond the war-torn, ragged and still industrial capital.

A black and white photo from the late 1950s or early 1960s showing a sunlit view of cyclists on a cycle path and pedestrians on a footpath, well away from the motor traffic in the background
Stevenage in its early days, with dedicated paths for cyclists and pedestrians © Heritage Images/Getty Images
A black and white photo of families out shopping in pedestrianised streets of functional late 1950s architecture
Stevenage’s pedestrianised town centre shopping area in 1958 © Getty Images

Now new towns are back as another new Labour government touts them as part of the solution to the UK’s housing crisis. The last government’s ambitious housebuilding targets were stymied by its own rural and suburban MPs, fearful of their constituents’ ire. Nimbyism has been a powerful force in politics. Almost everyone agrees on the need to build more houses — just not near where they live.

The new government’s legislative programme, set out in the King’s Speech this summer, suggested that communities would get a say on “how, not if” new homes are to be built. If the government is to confront the issue, new towns such as Stevenage must surely be back on the agenda. But are they, ultimately, a good thing?

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Five people, four of them in high-vis jackets, walk up a street, past a row of houses and parked cars
Labour leader Keir Starmer and deputy Angela Rayner on a visit to Derby during the election campaign earlier this year, when one of the party’s key pledges was to build more affordable homes © Getty Images

Just before the election, the now deputy prime minister Angela Rayner revealed new visions of today’s towns of the future, renderings apparently created using AI that showed mistily nostalgic Edwardian-style red-brick mansion blocks, tree-lined streets and pavement cafés. Rayner, whose ministerial brief covers housing, suggested that only “attractive” homes would be built. Who, after all, objects to “attractive” housing? David Milner, director of the lobby group Create Streets (responsible for those images) writes: “We believe beautiful and sustainable design helps to boost housing delivery by winning over residents.”

The historicism of those machine hallucinations is a revealing echo of lingering British anxieties over style and modernity. The nation (or at least its developers) proved a little resistant to Modernism in the early 20th century, its public buildings veering between Neo-Georgian or Art Deco and its housing dominated by Artsy-Craftsy, half-timbered semis with the occasional stab at a more “continental” Modernism. 

Stevenage represented a clean break. At its heart was the UK’s first Modernist town centre. Its design remains largely intact today; strolling through its streets, with their canopies, benches, green spaces and play areas, gives a little blast of postwar urban utopianism. The pedestrianised streets (also the nation’s first) might be a little shabbier than in mid-century photos; there are plenty of charity shops, slot-machine joints and a few big empty hulks (a defunct BHS and Poundland) but the centre is still lively. 

One focal point is an abstract, sculptural clock tower, a ghost of that most municipal centrepiece of the Victorian city, here transformed into a Modernist monument to the place itself: a ceramic map of the new town on one side, on another a portrait of Lewis Silkin, the minister responsible for establishing new towns. When Silkin arrived in the small old town of Stevenage next to the site in 1946 he was confronted by protests about the 10,000 new council homes in the Hertfordshire countryside. “It’s no good you jeering,” he shouted over the crowd. “It’s going to be done.”

New developments provoke huge resistance and the UK’s planning system is immensely amenable to objections. It follows that the government’s plans are heavily skewed towards reform of the planning system. The quasi-religious sanctity of the greenbelt is sensibly being questioned, and areas identified as “grey belt” (which might consist of car parks, derelict buildings, transport sidings, agricultural structures or petrol stations) could be freed up. Analysis by estate agents Knight Frank suggests such sites might accommodate up to 200,000 homes, mostly in the south and particularly the areas surrounding London.  

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New towns, though, are something else. Although the government is consulting on potential locations, one of the most obvious sites is the Oxford-Cambridge corridor, a long-mooted plan for a “knowledge-intensive arc” that would have, more or less at its centre, the last and most successful of the UK’s new towns: Milton Keynes. This band of development could accommodate up to a million new homes and be planned around a revived Oxford-to-Cambridge rail line. One upside is employment and desirability — tech, biosciences and pharma are all well rooted here. The danger is proximity to London and the university cities — new towns could become dreary dormitory suburbs with little life of their own.

But whatever the risks, the need is there. According to a report by Schroders, the average house now costs nine times average earnings; in 1999 it was half that. If Britain is to house itself in the future, something will have to give.


Back at the church in Stevenage, I talked to rector Karen Mitchell. She introduced me to Jan and Mike Wilson who, she said, were the “real locals”.

“I’d been married for a year and I got a council house here after being on the waiting list for two weeks,” Mike told me. “When Stevenage was built, it was all council houses. Everything.” 

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Jan adds: “Now our granddaughter has been on the waiting list for years. And it’s hopeless, there’s always going to be someone more needy.” This is not just perception. There are currently 1.3mn households on local authority waiting lists.

Unlike the similarly cash-strapped postwar Labour government — which facilitated a huge programme of slum clearance, prefabrication and council housing (along with founding the NHS and the welfare state) — this government appears to suggest that the new housing will be delivered largely by the private sector. 

Is this really the best route? There is little incentive for developers to flood the market with new homes and risk lowering prices, while huge public investment is needed in creating a new town. The postwar new towns were built by development corporations, government-established bodies that oversaw their planning and infrastructure. But this kind of large-scale planning has faded away as local authorities have been successively starved of cash in the post-austerity years. The 300 extra planners the government has promised will barely make a dent.  

In 1946, as in 2024, a Labour government had to introduce legislation to create new towns. The question is whether we still have the same ambition and confidence. Stevenage was a determined statement of intent, of faith in modernity expressed through building. This was a town designed for the automobile age but with a pedestrianised centre and a station half an hour from London. What do we want towns to be now? Those twee pictures of Edwardian-style streets suggest a certain timidity. 

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A map of the new towns built in the three phases of post-war development

Just as important as how they look is how they work and how they are financed. One economic tool used to great effect after the second world war — and is being considered again — is land value capture. The change in designation of land from agricultural to residential use can result (according to a recent report by the Centre for Progressive Policy) in an uplift of around 275 times the original value. Land speculation in the UK has had a crushing effect on new development, with landowners sitting on land until its value soars through change of use. 

For the postwar wave of new towns, land was compulsorily purchased at its agricultural price — not including what is known as “hope value”, the expectation of uplift created by the proposals. The towns were then able to use that increase in the value of their holdings and reinvest in the community. Government assumed the risk and communities reaped the rewards. This method has faded away in the UK, yet the Dutch new town of Almere (often dismissed as dull but which I think is absolutely fascinating) managed to capture an astonishing 90 per cent of the uplift in value of its land for public infrastructure.

A black and white photo from 1912 shows a horse-drawn cart on an empty street with a thatched cottage on one side and bigger houses in the background
A street in Letchworth in 1912 © Getty Images
A black and white photo shows a sunlit view of a tree-lined residential street with semi-detached houses and a pair of parked cars
A 1950s view of Welwyn Garden City © Alamy

The vision of an enhanced community with the private house and garden at its centre also characterised earlier versions of the new town. Stevenage is sandwiched between Letchworth and Welwyn, two experiments in that much-studied English phenomenon, the garden city. The addition of the word “garden” has sometimes been used to appease objectors, as if sounding a little greener will assuage neighbours’ fears about the horrors of urbanity. The term is the invention of Ebenezer Howard, who wrote the short but enduringly influential Garden Cities of To-morrow (1898) — a book that emerged precisely from a fear of London as a traffic and smoke-choked hellhole.  

Garden cities were to be limited in scale, surrounded by inviolable green belts; to be walkable, connected by public transport; and to contain all the elements required for a productive and civilised life: factories but also theatres and social clubs, market gardens, back gardens and even forests. They employed Community Land Trusts (non-profit corporations that held the land on behalf of the community while also acting as long-term stewards of public space) to keep control and maintain a stake in future success. They were gently ridiculed at the time as priggish places of self-consciously Arts and Crafts cottages, socialist sandals and skittles, towns with no pub. Letchworth’s main industry was a corset factory and it boasted the world’s first traffic roundabout (1904).

But the idea proved astonishingly influential. It spread to Australia (Canberra was planned as a garden city), Singapore, Zelenograd near Moscow (Lenin was rumoured to have visited Letchworth), the US (Augusta, Georgia, Reston, Virginia and the New Deal Greenbelt communities), to Christchurch in New Zealand and Jardim América in São Paulo.  

If British garden cities are often mocked for their gentle suburbanity, you might also point to Milton Keynes, once derided as the zenith of late modern dullness but now a thriving city of more than 280,000 with an eccentric mix of architecture, landscape (influenced by prehistory and Stonehenge as much as by Los Angeles), “car-centricity” as well as walkability.  

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The confidence in the future that spawned Milton Keynes in the late 1960s has faded. As prime minister, Gordon Brown attempted to launch a new generation of new towns in 2007 and, to generate more enthusiasm, christened them “eco-towns”. David Cameron’s coalition government  jumped on the garden city bandwagon and attempted to build one at Ebbsfleet in Kent, though it still it looks suspiciously like any other estate of executive homes. It remains, however, one of the most promising sites for a major new town with its connections to high-speed rail and the capital. Then chancellor George Osborne subsequently downgraded his ambitions to the painfully quaint notion of “garden villages”. 


Building by decree is rarely straightforward. Take Palmanova, a garrison town established in 1593 by the Venetian Republic and intended as a model city. There are rumours that Leonardo da Vinci was involved and, even if he wasn’t, its form was certainly influenced by his designs, planned in a star shape for optimal artillery defence. It was a disaster. No one wanted to live there. The climate was wrong, the location dull, metropolitan life absent. In the end the authorities resorted to populating it with convicts who were gifted free homes in a desperate attempt to keep it alive. It is still a soporific rarity, an unattractive Renaissance town.

An aerial view of a city planned in a star-like shape with streets radiating outwards in concentric rings
The planned fortified city of Palmanova in northern Italy © Alamy

Cities thrive on unpredictability, culture and commerce but also a pinch of vice. That cocktail is difficult to plan for and utopian regulation often kills it. While sometimes lovely, ideal settlements founded by well-meaning industrialists (Titus Salt’s Saltaire, Cadbury’s Bournville or Czech shoemaker Bata’s Zlín) are tainted by worker-capture; the same idea as giving tech employees free snacks to keep them on campus.

2.8mnResidents currently housed in the UK’s postwar new towns

Then there is Poundbury, Britain’s own retro-royalist utopia — a future that looks like a feudal past, only with parking garages and a branch of Waitrose. Built on land outside Dorchester belonging to the Duchy of Cornwall, this new town/extension was built in a vernacular style with a touch of classical, a little Georgian and a sort-of-medieval picturesque street plan. It’s undeniably popular. 

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Meanwhile, our confidence in the future seems to have been hijacked by Big Tech billionaires with their missions to Mars and Moon-shots. For a while, “smart cities” seemed to be the future but these began to sound suspiciously like data-mining operations.  

If we have lost that faith in the future that characterised Stevenage, and the ability to build the necessary large infrastructure (see the sorry HS2 high-speed rail saga), what is left is to expand existing successful cities. This is where the “grey-belt” reappears, the easing of the urban corset. But there are problems in even agreeing to what a city (or a city extension) of the future might look like. 

A colour photo of modern houses built of red brick against a sunny blue sky
Poundbury in southwest England, a recent vision of old-world architecture © Universal Images Group/Getty Images

The recent extraordinary reaction of the political right, in both the US and the UK, to the idea of “15-minute cities” — spinning the notion of a walkable, dense and well-distributed conurbation into a conspiracy theory about state control limiting citizens’ access to neighbourhoods in their cars — hints at these problems. Urbanists want compact quartiers, Paris-style, with local bakeries and surgeries; many homebuyers want double garages, driveways and big gardens. And the big developers that operate something close to a cartel in the UK market (their influence is unique in Europe and the results have been dire) like these better too — easier to build, and no problems with pesky infrastructure.  

Perhaps to counter the pervasive presence and influence of the housebuilders, there might also  be space to accommodate self-builders and eccentrics, places designated for experiments in new ways of communal living, new forms of ownership, new kinds of architecture. The rhetoric at the moment leans towards design codes and control, which is fine. But if the government is revising planning law, it could revisit rules facilitating residents to build their own more individual homes, suited to their particular needs. Almere allowed residents to design their homes any way they wish, with no aesthetic controls. The results are occasionally bizarre but they also accommodate eccentricity and individuality. Are these not a critical element of the English sense of identity? 

The postwar British new towns now house 2.8mn people and were, in retrospect, an audacious and incredible success. If there is a lesson to be drawn from them, it might be that government needs to take a central role. This is not something that can be left solely to a private sector that demands short-term profit. There is also an opportunity to revisit the commodification of housing that has led to the crisis. There are other forms of tenure beyond home ownership.

Cities take time to build. If there are a few mistakes along the way, they can be rectified in the future. And we can take heart in one thing: this has been done before.

Edwin Heathcote is the FT’s architecture critic

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Lost Property, St Paul’s, London, review

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The hotel is round the corner from St Paul’s cathedral

Lost Property, part of Hilton’s fancy Curio Collection, has a very specific theme: the lost history of London.

Read on to find out more about the plush bedrooms and tasty grub.

The hotel is round the corner from St Paul’s cathedral

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The hotel is round the corner from St Paul’s cathedralCredit: Lost Property
The restaurant is a calm oasis away from the chaos of Ludgate Hill

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The restaurant is a calm oasis away from the chaos of Ludgate HillCredit: Lost Property

Where is Lost Property hotel?

Round the corner from St Paul’s cathedral and on the busy street of Ludgate Hill, Lost Property is in a central spot in London.

City Thameslink train station is a two-minute stroll away and St. Paul’s underground station is a five-minute walk away.

What is Lost Property hotel like?

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You may not even notice the image of Winston Churchill or the inspiring quotes subtly emblazoned on the wall in reception, but take a closer look at and you’ll find little treasures hidden all over this 145-bedroom hotel.

Check your drinks coaster in the bar – each one is printed with the definition of a lost word which has been removed from the English dictionary.

If you haven’t visited the capital before, ask for a room with views of the impressive St. Paul’s cathedral, an historic London landmark.

What is there to do at Lost Property hotel?

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For those that fancy a workout, there’s a very nice gym with Peloton bikes and treadmills which sit under large windows in the ceiling so you can soak up the natural light while you cycle.

Make sure to pick up a coffee before you head out for the day as you’ll struggle to find a better one in London – it’s the only hotel to have partnered with Monmouth coffee, a high-quality London roaster.

The hotel is a short stroll from some top tourist attractions like the Tate Modern (15-minutes walk), the London Eye (30-minutes walk) and Somerset House (18-minutes walk).

What is there to eat and drink at Lost Property hotel?

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The restaurant is a calm oasis away from the chaos of Ludgate Hill on its doorstep and the talented mixologists behind the bar can whip you up any tipple, even if it’s not on the menu.

I requested “something tequila-based” and was handed an elegant coupe filled with a delicious citrus-y, sour cocktail that packed a punch.

The food is much like the rest of the hotel: decent-quality, with added elegance.

My buttery pan-fried fillet of sea bass, for example, came with leeks and potatoes, as well as a Champagne velouté and caviar for that extra pizazz.

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What are the rooms like at Lost Property hotel?

Rooms have been created with busy travellers in mind, although glamour hasn’t been forgotten about.

USB ports by the bed and wardrobes with enough space and hangers are convenient, while the sleek furnishings and marble-top surfaces elevate rooms to a luxury level.

The only major difference between rooms is the size, so if you aren’t staying long, go for the standard Queen Guest Room.

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How much is Lost Property hotel?

Rooms cost from £209 per night.

Click here to book.

Is Lost Property hotel family friendly?

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Although kids would be well looked after here, there may be some other hotels more suited to families.

Is there access for guests with disabilities?

Yes, there are spacious accessible rooms with roll-in showers.

The restaurant is on the ground floor and there are toilets for wheelchair users.

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Looking for a place to stay? For more hotel inspiration click here.

The only major difference between rooms is the size

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The only major difference between rooms is the sizeCredit: Lost Property

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‘I don’t really like the word “designer”’

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Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free

Michael Marriott’s east London studio is a wonderful mess. It’s rammed with tools, boxes, stools, signs, books and designs, prototypes of his own furniture and products and those of friends, piled all around with fascinating things. This is not one of those self-consciously showroom studios, more for effect than process, but rather a place of real ideas and work.

The designer, a dependable and much-loved fixture of London’s scene for the past three decades, makes me a strong coffee. I notice, halfway through our conversation, that the mug says The Tool Appreciation Society. “I love tools,” Marriott says. “They’re perfect objects, partly because they haven’t been tampered with by designers. They’ve evolved through use and they relate very closely to the human body, the way in which they fit in the hand.” We spend a happy few minutes talking about hammers.

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His comment on the (lack of) design of tools is revealing. “I don’t really like the word ‘designer’,” he says. “Design means lots of things. Designer fashion or jeans, sometimes it’s just a colour scheme. I’m slightly ashamed to be a designer. We’re caught up in the world’s problems: overproduction, over-marketing. On the one hand I feel I should just stop. So I try to do things in a way that causes as little harm as possible. Design should be about solving problems but it becomes part of the problem, which is overconsumption.”

A workshop with grey floor and strip lighting is filled floor-to-ceiling with tools, material and objects, from screwdrivers and saws, to stacks of pieces of wood, chair frames and a garden gnome
The designer’s studio is chock-full of tools, books, found objects and his own furniture and product designs © Ned Collyer

Marriott’s designs are often modest. They employ found objects or involve a small adaptation of an existing product, items which are useful and economical but also intelligent, sometimes wryly commenting on the broader world of design through small gestures. There are candlesticks and doorknockers made in the image of hex wrenches, for instance, a clock face made from old cardboard boxes, a lampshade made from a plastic bucket or a bottle-opener made from broken bicycle rims.

Of course, there are more conventional designs too, for furniture or shelving, the latter including his popular Croquet range, with brackets inspired by croquet hoops, but also his Olá café chair, a version of the bentwood Thonet classic. These he used in the designs for Bloomsbury’s Café Deco, a lovely space which manages to blend the proletarian-utilitarian style of a London caff with the bourgeois sophistication of a continental café.

In a room with white walls and pine floorboards a small table has a central column in eye-popping fluorescent pink. On its top is a lime-green vase filled with flowers
Marriott’s Zurito side table is made of oak and lacquered birch ply © Michael Marriott

He has a nice sideline in shop fittings (as at Leila’s in Shoreditch). “When I started out, I thought I was a furniture designer, and I think I am, by philosophy, but I like to do what I can using as little material as possible, making things that are reduced.” He has also become known for installation and exhibition design, where “you’re working with a curator and a graphic designer, so you’re not just making shapes but working with a cultural context too. And there’s also a fee . . . ”

What there often isn’t is a place to sell some of the more eclectic or eccentric designs: the smaller, quirkier things. Marriott addressed that with his online shop WoodMetalPlastic.

“That’s what these things I do are made of. At first we were just selling pieces like the Ernö hook [a tough, injection-moulded double wall hook] but then we started with other pieces like this camping tin-opener from Spain which was old stock; the manufacturer closed down in the 1960s, so these were probably the last of these things in the world.” There are also plenty of other wonderful, everyday, simple things: plastic bowls, brushes, lemon squeezers, brightly coloured but unselfconscious. And also inexpensive. This is not the world of Milanese high design but of good things made accessible. (I like the Kex cabinet handles adapted from brass radiator keys, £5.95 each, designed by Kitty Hiscox.)

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The bright-orange double hook is shown in close-up on a well-worn wooden door, holding a work jacket in primary blue and a white shirt on a coat hanger
The Ernö coat hook is injection-moulded in Zytel, a nylon-based polymer © Michael Marriott

For a long time Marriott taught at London’s Royal College of Art, where he studied, and his impact has been felt widely. He has always provided the antidote to the starry designers of self-conscious icons, the jet-setting names who think their work blurs boundaries between design and art and see their statement sofas sell for big money at auctions. But when I ask him about his effect on the London design scene, he modestly demurs. “I don’t see it myself,” he says, “but I have been told by others.”

In fact, he is very much a London designer. “I was born here,” he says, “and though I grew up in the suburbs [Dartford, Kent], I came back as soon as I could and have been here ever since.” There is something about his wit, the slightly sly take on the culture of consumption which he so successfully subverts with his designs, that has a hint of London’s ad hoc, almost punkish spirit. His shop had a presence during Milan’s Salone del Mobile this year, a lively storefront which was one of the sprawling event’s highlights (partly by being everything the design industry at large is not).

A man wearing black-rimmed glasses, a blue shirt and jeans sits at table in a kitchen with yellow walls, pointing at a ceiling light made out of an ironing-board frame
‘I like to do what I can using as little material as possible,’ says Marriott © Ned Collyer

I pick up a pepper grinder from the table, a thing that was hiding behind my mug. It has a head shaped like a nut. “I know, the world doesn’t really need another pepper grinder,” he says, “but I’m more interested in how these things sit in a landscape of objects. How does it speak to the other objects on the table?” I look at the things around it: another mug, an Opinel knife, a handwoven basket, a book, a bent-metal oil and vinegar set-holder. Some are his designs, others he sells in his shop, others still are the workmanlike, useful objects he loves and lives with. It seems to me like they’re all having a pretty convivial conversation, at least as much as objects can.

michaelmarriott.com

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One-week warning for anyone with a side hustle to act to avoid £100 fine

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One-week warning for anyone with a side hustle to act to avoid £100 fine

IF you earned more than £1,000 in the last tax year from your side hustles, you need to register for self-assessment.

If you miss the October 5 deadline for registration and then fail to send in a tax return on time, you’ll likely face a fine.

Read on to find out how you can avoid an £100 fine

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Read on to find out how you can avoid an £100 fineCredit: Getty

A side-hustle is something you do to earn extra income, such as selling things online, doing freelance work alongside your normal job, or making money from tasks like pet-sitting, dog walking, or babysitting.

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How much you earn is important. If you make less than £1000 in a tax year from your hustle, it doesn’t count as taxable income, and you don’t have to declare it.

But, once you start making more than this, you need to register as self-employed and start paying tax on the money earned over this amount.

The threshold is based on your profit after deductible expenses. For instance, if you were making and selling jewellery, you can deduct the money you spent buying materials from how much you earned in total.

You only need to file and pay tax if your remaining profits are more than £1,000 for the year.

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You also need to register if any of the following applied in the past year:

  • you were a sole trader
  • you were a partner in a business partnership
  • you had a total taxable income of more than £150,000
  • you had to pay Capital Gains Tax when you sold or ‘disposed of’ something that increased in value
  • you had to pay the High Income Child Benefit Charge

You might also need to register and send in a tax return if you have untaxed income, such as:

  • money from renting out a property
  • tips and commission
  • income from savings, investments and dividends
  • foreign income

And there are some scenarios where you don’t need to send in a return, but might choose to anyway. For instance, if you want to:

  • claim some Income Tax reliefs
  • prove you’re self-employed, for example to claim Tax-Free Childcare or Maternity Allowance
  • pay voluntary National Insurance contributions

You can check if you need to do self-assessment with the Government’s online tool.

The deadline for registering is October 5. There’s no penalty for registering after this, but if you haven’t signed up, filed your tax return, and paid your bill by January 31 you will be fined.

If you do miss the October 5 deadline, you should sign up as soon as possible. This means you’ll be set up and able to file your return in time.

I was FINED £500 for leaving an Ikea cabinet outside my home for someone to take for free – I was shaking and panicking

There are two key deadlines for actually submitting the return. If you want to file a paper return, it needs to be in by October 31. If you’re submitting online, you have until January 31.

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If you miss the deadline for filing, you face an immediate £100 fine. If your return is more than three months late, you’ll then have to pay an additional £10 a day for a maximum of 90 days.

If you’re more than six months late, you pay a fine worth 5% of your total tax bill – or £300, whichever is higher – and then if you’re 12 months late you’ll have another fine worth the higher of 5% or £300.

You also need to pay everything you owe by January 31, or you’ll also face a late payment fine.

If you’re more than 30 days late, you need to pay 5% of the tax due as a fine.

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If you’re six months late you pay another fine worth 5% of the tax outstanding and then the same again at 12 months.

HMRC charge interest on late tax payments. The interest is charged from the date the payment became due until the date of payment and is added automatically.

There is a helpful calculator on the gov.uk website that you can use to calculate what your late payment fees will be, if you miss the deadline.

You can challenge any penalties if you have a reasonable excuse. You usually have 30 days from the date your penalty was issued to contact HMRC or make an appeal. If you miss the deadline, you’ll need to give a reason.

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The taxman says examples of reasonable excuses include:

  • your partner or another close relative died shortly before the tax return or payment deadline
  • you had an unexpected stay in hospital that prevented you from dealing with your tax affairs
  • you had a serious or life-threatening illness
  • your computer or software failed while you were preparing your online return
  • issues with HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) online services
  • a fire, flood or theft prevented you from completing your tax return
  • postal delays that you could not have predicted
  • delays related to a disability or mental illness you have
  • you were unaware of or misunderstood your legal obligation
  • you relied on someone else to send your return, and they did not

Whatever the reason, you must send your return or payment as soon as you can.

Who needs to fill out a self-assessment tax return?

YOU’LL need to submit a tax return if any of the following applied to you in the 2022/2023 tax year:

  • You were self-employed and your income was more than £1,000
  • You had multiple sources of income over £1,000
  • You earned £10,000 or more before tax from savings, investments, shares or dividends
  • You claimed Child Benefit when you or your partner earned more than £50,000 a year.
  • You earned more than £2,500 from renting out property, or from other untaxed income, such as tips or commission
  • You earned more than £100,000 in taxable income
  • You earned income from abroad or lived abroad and had a UK income
  • You need to pay capital gains tax
  • You received income from a trust
  • Your state pension was more than your personal allowance and was your only source of income (unless you started getting your pension on or after 6 April 2016)
  • HMRC has told you that you didn’t pay enough tax last year (and you haven’t already paid up through your tax code or via voluntary payments)
  • You filed a self-assessment tax return for the 2021/22 tax year (even if you didn’t owe any tax)
  • You were self-employed and earning less than £1,000 but you still want to pay ‘class 2’ national insurance contributions voluntarily to protect your entitlement to the state pension and certain benefits

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A big bet on basketball

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Good morning from Gotham, where New Yorkers are definitely sleeping in after the craziest week of the year, between the gridlocking mayhem of the UN General Assembly and the indictment of our mayor. It was into this chaos that Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian launched the inaugural Athlos women’s-only athletics meeting, the first of a deluge of new track meets attracting big money in a shake-up for the sport, whose plans we wrote about last month.

But after talking the talk, could Athlos . . . run the race? Thursday’s meet was absolutely unlike any other track meet, at least in the US. With a red carpet for athlete walk-ins and celebrity attendees like Flavor Flav, VIP lounges directly on the track, and DJ D-Nice spinning tracks between events, the capacity crowd at Icahn Stadium was certainly treated to an event.

Competitors raved about the experience and 100-metre winner Marie-Josée Ta Lou-Smith, 35, told Scoreboard that she contemplated retirement before Athlos popped up with a $60,000 check for first place. The meet was not without its wobbles — new Olympic champion Masai Russell filed a protest in the 100 metre hurdles after she said officials didn’t register a false start — but Ohanian ultimately delivered on a promise to build something different. The question now is whether audiences and sponsors keep it growing. 

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For now, we have dispatches on private equity’s newest sports target and a look at the dour financial picture for English rugby. Do read on — Sara Germano, US sports business correspondent

Send us tips and feedback at scoreboard@ft.com. Not already receiving the email newsletter? Sign up here. For everyone else, let’s go.

Private equity battles over European basketball

Exclusive: BC Partners in talks to buy EuroLeague stake © AFP via Getty Images

Private equity is circling sports, that much we know. But why is Europe’s pre-eminent basketball competition attracting so much interest from investors? 

As revealed by the FT this week, London-based BC Partners has entered exclusive talks to buy a minority stake in EuroLeague’s commercial business at a €1bn valuation. To get to that stage, BC saw off competition from rival firm General Atlantic and SURJ Sports Investment, a subsidiary of Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund.

While basketball has a huge global following, the popularity of EuroLeague pales in comparison to North America’s National Basketball Association. So what’s the appeal?

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Europe has certainly emerged as a hotbed for basketball talent. Just look at French centre Victor Wembanyama, now starring for the San Antonio Spurs in the NBA. And he’s not a one-off. Nikola Jokic, the Serbian three-time NBA most valuable player, and two-time MVP Giannis Antetokounmpo both began their professional careers playing for European teams.

EuroLeague itself has been gaining traction too. The competition’s television audience increased 27 per cent year on year in the 2023-24 season, bolstered by interest in Turkey, Serbia, Greece, Spain, Lithuania and Italy. User numbers for its online streaming platform rose 46 per cent to 85,000. BC Partners would bring deep experience of media rights, via its ownership of broadcaster United Group.

There is scope to grow in other ways too. Attracting more clubs from northern Europe, such as the UK, and expanding in the Middle East could help to increase commercial revenues and reduce reliance on southern Europe.

The league is already home to some well-known sporting names. Real Madrid (yes, that one) has been the dominant team, but faces competition from other big clubs, including Bayern Munich, Barcelona and Olympiacos. Such heavyweights provide the foundation for a wider fan base.

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But does a deal make sense for the sport? After all, the firm’s bid comes at a time when private equity’s involvement in sport is under increased scrutiny. 

If a deal does go ahead, EuroLeague would do well to take heed of how the Spanish football league approached its investment from CVC Capital Partners. In short, La Liga’s deal was structured to encourage clubs to put money into stadium infrastructure instead of blowing it all on players.

Private investment and European basketball don’t always mix well. British Basketball League, which operated the professional game in the UK, had its licence terminated earlier this year due to financial difficulties stemming from an investment by Miami-based 777 Partners in 2021. Last night saw the debut of Super League Basketball, its replacement.

Professional basketball outside the US is still small enough that taking the wrong path once can lead to existential questions. Investors clearly see something in European basketball. For the sport itself, there’s a lot on the line.

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English rugby union’s financial woes laid bare

Trouble ahead: rugby clubs told to cut costs © Getty Images

In a telling sign of how bad things have got in rugby union, the first annual assessment of its finances was unveiled this week by a firm of insolvency experts.

Leonard Curtis, which specialises in corporate restructuring, released its inaugural Rugby Finance Report, a publication modelled loosely on Deloitte’s Football Money League. It made for sober reading.

Among the key findings was that seven of the 10 clubs in the Premiership — the top tier of English rugby union — are now “balance sheet insolvent”, meaning they are reliant on rich owners putting in money to keep them going. None of the teams made a profit in 2022/23, while combined debts reached £311.5mn. Losses across the 10 clubs hit £30.5mn, and TV revenue fell. The report did not point to any positive catalysts for improvement on the horizon.

The gloomy picture shows that the £200mn investment by CVC Capital Partners in 2019 has so far failed to alter the trajectory of English rugby union’s top clubs. That money effectively became a bailout due to the financial hit of the pandemic. And even so, three top tier clubs have since collapsed.

The authors of the report offered one simple short-term fix to keep the game afloat: slash wage bills. If clubs can stop haemorrhaging cash, they argued, it would provide a bit of breathing space to carry out more drastic reforms. Fears that dropping pay would cause an exodus of talent to other countries were overblown, they argued.

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Potential longer-term solutions for rugby require increasing revenue. The game needs a larger, younger audience both to fill seats and to drive the value of broadcast rights. To do that rugby may need to consider some major surgery both on and off the pitch to make it quicker, easier to understand and more entertaining.

James Haskell, the former England international who wrote the foreword to the report, warned that the time for taking action was running out. Efforts to fix the game’s problems so far were like “rearranging the deckchairs” on a sinking ship.

“The next 18 months are going to be the most important for rugby”, he said. “We’ve got to change or we’re going to be stuffed.”

Highlights

Done deal: Everton sold to US billionaire Dan Friedkin © Getty Images
  • US billionaire Dan Friedkin has agreed a deal to buy Premier League club Everton, two months after an earlier attempt to buy the team collapsed.

  • Italian football club AC Milan is in talks with the government of the Democratic Republic of Congo over a multimillion euro sponsorship deal to promote the war-torn country as a tourist destination.

  • The German football league will re-auction a package of live games for its next rights cycle due to start in the 2025/26 season after a court partially upheld a lawsuit from broadcaster DAZN, who challenged the result of the previous auction.

  • Flutter, which owns bookmakers Fan Duel and Paddy Power, predicts its profit will double by 2027 due to the booming US sports betting market.

Business of football: the big data arms race

A technological revolution is under way in football, as team owners turn to the latest data analytics and AI to gain a competitive edge in the battle for talent. As more professional investors buy into the sport and rules on spending get tighter, future champions will increasingly be created away from the pitch by teams of software engineers. Watch the latest instalment of our Scoreboard video series.

Final Whistle

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Less than two years after suffering a devastating cardiac arrest on the field, Damar Hamlin of the Buffalo Bills notched a career-first interception in Monday night’s victory over the Jacksonville Jaguars. While Hamlin, 26, returned to the gridiron for the 2023 season in a reserve position, he regained his starter status this month and punctuated his full recovery by picking off a pass from Jaguars’ quarterback Trevor Lawrence. Bills Mafia could not be more thrilled.

Scoreboard is written by Josh Noble, Samuel Agini and Arash Massoudi in London, Sara Germano, James Fontanella-Khan, and Anna Nicolaou in New York, with contributions from the team that produce the Due Diligence newsletter, the FT’s global network of correspondents and data visualisation team

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Thousands of households must act NOW or miss out on £200 free cash for energy and grocery bills

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Thousands of households must act NOW or miss out on £200 free cash for energy and grocery bills

THOUSANDS of households have been warned to act now to receive £200 of free cash to help with energy and shopping bills.

A cost-of-living support scheme has now been extended for the sixth time, but Brits must get their applications in quickly to benefit.

Thousands of households have just days left to apply for the Household Support Fund

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Thousands of households have just days left to apply for the Household Support FundCredit: Getty

The Household Support Fund (HSF) was set up by the Government back in 2021 to help those struggling with rapidly rising inflation.

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At the peak of the crisis, the average household’s annual energy bill under the Ofgem price cap rose to over £4,000.

The fund was originally set to run out after about six months, but it has been refreshed in every Budget since then.

The latest round of cash will see the end of the scheme pushed back from next week to Spring 2025.

An extra £421 million is being added to the pot between October 2024 and April 2025.

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Funding comes from the Department for Work and Pensions, but the HSF is administered and distributed by local councils.

This means that each area has its own deadlines and criteria to access the money.

Thousands of households under the umbrella of Birmingham City Council have just days left to get their claims submitted.

Those eligible can receive up to £200, which can be put towards food or energy bills, as well as costs for “essential goods” like water.

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Applications can be submitted by filling out the Hardship Grant Community Fund expression of interest form on the council’s website or by calling 0121 634 7100.

Martin Lewis issues warning to millions of households missing out on Council Tax support

In order to qualify you must:

  • Be a Birmingham resident
  • Be experiencing “financial hardship” in relation to essential costs
  • Not have received a £200 grant payment in the past 12 months

You may also be required to submit proof of address and benefits if you are receiving them.

However, HSF payments do not affect your eligibility for means-tested benefits and Universal Credit.

The council also confirmed that the funding would not be affected by the Section 114 notice, which declared it effectively bankrupt.

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Once you have submitted the form, the council will assess your application and email you about next steps.

Applications close on Monday September 30.

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In-demand hairdressers are downsizing. Good luck getting an appointment

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You could very easily, as I did, walk up and down Brewer Street several times and keep missing the doorway to Michael Douglas’s hair studio. Graffitied from top to bottom, and nestled in London’s Soho district, it could be a threshold of the less than salubrious variety. But hit the right buzzer, cross the hallway, climb a flight of stairs and you’ll find one of the grooviest hairdressing spaces you’ve ever seen — with just a single appointment chair on the premises. 

Unlike a typical hair salon that would be filled with rows of customers in chairs, Douglas’s studio, MD London, is an intimate space that allows for only one client at a time. And to get in, you need to be in the know. There’s no shopfront, no signage, and no access unless you have an appointment.

The polar opposite to the rise of the supersalons (often 5,000 sq ft or more) that we’ve seen in recent years, the counter-trend sees a move towards hair studios with no more than five chairs, where both hairdressers and clients feel less frenetic. There’s no holding pattern at the wash basins, no tight turnaround time, no sitting in foils in front of 30-plus strangers. Studio appointments are more relaxed, personal, individual — even homely. It isn’t about a “big name” above the door (though there may very well be one inside), everyone’s just there for great hair, less ego and a more personal touch.

Fiona Harkin, director of foresight at trend agency The Future Laboratory, says it’s about “this idea of self-care experiences that are really more unique to you”. Clients are looking for more intimate connections, while simultaneously “beauty and wellness are manifesting as experiences that are more therapeutic”.

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The quiet move in hair studios is also the result of Covid. Clients became accustomed to having their hair done at home, where they felt relaxed and the service was solely about them. And hairdressers realised that the appointment book didn’t have to feel like a non-stop, noisy treadmill. For some, there was no way back. 

Douglas, though, was way ahead of the curve. “I’ve had a private studio for about 12 years,” he says. The initial decision was “in a way about me rather than the customer. The thing I like most about my job is the one-to-one nature of it, and I realised that when you’re working on your own with a client, you really get the person.” (Prices start from £120, mdlondon.com).

For the clients, it’s a winner too. “I’m good at my job, but they also love paying extra for the private experience — because obviously you have to charge more,” he says. Without the traditional salon booking structure and its tight schedules, he can allocate the necessary time to each appointment. 

Douglas’s studio holds none of the standard issue “luxury” salon touchpoints such as marble countertops. Even the small wash basin is situated in a corner of his office, at the back, “as that’s where the plumbing is”. But the space feels welcoming, like a living room, and is decked out in mid-century modern furniture. It also offers him flexibility with his (and his clients’) working hours, and the studio doubles up as a creative space for him to work on his hair tools range, filming brand content and YouTube videos, and hosting events such as a recent collaboration with OGX haircare.

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Over in Chelsea, sought-after colourist Sibi Bolan has left the big salon world behind (she was previously master colourist at Josh Wood Atelier) and now works in a small penthouse studio (where celebrity hairdresser Ivan Ferreira also operates), which can host a maximum of five clients but usually has fewer. Again, there’s no street visibility, so the uninitiated are oblivious to its presence. Even the Instagram account is private. Only those with an appointment are allowed past the front door. 

After the pandemic, Bolan sought to step away from “the relentlessness of the salon production line, lots of other chairs and clients, not being able to give that client the full attention and a bespoke service”. She found that her clients too wanted something different after lockdowns. “A lot of them were asking if I could still go to their house, or they could come to mine, but I didn’t want to be washing hair over the bath or for my private space to be littered with hair dyes.” Studio life was the answer. 

Big salons may offer a more luxurious environment but “the clients don’t care about that. They care about the attention to detail and walking out looking great with healthy hair,” says Bolan. “We also have a lot of socialites and VIP clients that appreciate the privacy. People don’t actually need the bravado of a huge salon, they just want to be in their own space, able to work and enjoy their time in a less noisy, open environment.” Many hang out before and after appointments, working or taking calls, adds Bolan, who now runs a waitlist via her Instagram (@sibibolan_colour) and integrates new customers when she has availability (prices start from £235 for single colour).

Bolan can’t imagine going back to a traditional salon environment and neither can Georgia-Fearn Ball of Fluff Hackney. Now going solo with the venture, she set it up with a fellow hairdresser as a two-chair studio, both preferring to be self-employed. 

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Going the studio route wasn’t a financial decision but about creating a different kind of hairdressing environment. “I always wanted it to feel relaxed, like a home from home, a friend’s place where you go for a catch-up, somewhere you can bring your laptop and work,” she says. Clients from her old salon followed her to the studio (located in a large warehouse), enjoying the community feel (cuts start at £68, fluffhackney.com). “It’s completely word of mouth — no one passes by, you can’t walk in, and you need to buzz or know the code for access.” 

Things are going so well she’s moving and upsizing to four chairs — but says she’ll go no higher. “Clients love being more private and able to chill. Being in a standard salon can be quite exposing and your care can get swapped around. Here I do everything, even the basin. It’s super-quality time with someone.” Success may have been “a slight accident” but now it’s definitely a case of go small or go home.

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