A SEASIDE town in Cumbria that’s won multiple awards is a well-kept holiday secret among travellers in the know, thanks to its unspoiled surroundings and spectacular sunsets.

Silloth in Allerdale, Cumbria, has been known since Victorian times for the quality of its air, the abundance of rare wildlife and its spectacular sunsets. And not much has changed since then.

4

4

Advertisement

It has several beaches, two of the most famous ones being West Beach and Grune Point.

West Beach is a large, sandy beach with dunes and views of the Solway Firth and the Scottish landscape, including the hills of Southern Galloway and the Lake District Fells.

Grune Point is a long, sandy shingle beach that sticks out into the Moricambe estuary and is a great spot for bird watching.

The beaches are some of the best places to watch Silloth’s famous sunsets, which are considered so good because of the town’s location and views.

If you don’t make it to the beach, another popular spot to catch one is Silloth Promenade – a traffic-free walkway which also has views of Solway Firth and Scotland.

The town’s Green is one of the largest and longest greens in the country, dating back to the 1860s.

 It’s located in the Silloth conservation area and close to the Hadrian’s Wall World Heritage Site, and has been awarded the Green Flag Award several years in a row for its high environmental standards, excellent visitor facilities, and beautiful maintenance.

It’s now recognised as one of the best parks in the country.

Among the things to do there is a water play area, which is a big hit during the summer months with children of all ages.

Silloth has won several awards over the years, including the Coastal Resort Trophy and Best Sustainable Development Town in 2016.

The town has also played host to lots of big events. For 21 years it held a music and beer festival, with Allerdale beers and local acts.

But the organises announced this year they’d made the “difficult decision” for it to come to an end.

The Silloth Vintage Rally however, still takes place across two days every year.

It’s a free, family-friendly event that takes place on Silloth Green, showcasing hundreds of vintage vehicles, including steam engines, stationary engines, commercial and military vehicles, classic cars, vintage tractors, and classic motorbikes.

If you can’t wait for the rally to come around, Silloth has its very own Motorcycle Museum.

The museum displays a range of production and Grand Prix bikes that have been raced by Jim Snaith at iconic circuits including the Isle of Man TT and Daytona. 

The museum is run by Snaith, and he shares his first-hand knowledge with visitors. 

Entry is free and donations are welcome.

Silloth’s location is also ideal for exploring the Lake District.

Drive around 45 minutes south east and you’ll find yourself in Keswick.

4

4

The UK’s best seaside town was revealed in July this year by Which?

Banburgh in Northumberland topped the list, making it four years in a row that the north east town has claimed the title.

Former central banker Mark Carney has warned there will be “significant stranded assets” in commercial real estate as governments push to reach net zero, highlighting the risks to property owners and lenders from older buildings that cannot adapt.

Property investors are facing a double whammy from the sharp fall in asset values caused by higher interest rates, and increasingly urgent demands to invest in energy efficiency.

Stranded assets are often associated with fossil fuels that will be phased out through the green transition, but Carney underscored that there are also older buildings that “aren’t going to make it” as countries regulate to cut greenhouse gas emissions across all sectors.

“There will be a tail of stranded assets . . . which are going to have to turn over and be refurbished if possible or knocked down and repurposed,” he said.

European real estate investors need to increase their annual capital spending by 30 per cent to get on top of upgrading buildings, according to a report this week by investment manager AEW. It found that the energy performance of European buildings was significantly behind the progress needed under the Paris agreement, where countries across the world agreed to limit the global temperature rises.

At the COP28 climate conference in Dubai last year, countries agreed to double the rate of energy efficiency improvements by 2030.

But in some cases, such as older, poorly located office buildings, the upfront cost may be uneconomic due to a lack of demand or low rents for the space.

Trying to knock down buildings that are deemed obsolete — such as the Marks and Spencer Oxford Street flagship or the former Museum of London — can also cause controversy, since preserving existing structures saves carbon from building materials such as steel and concrete.

Operating buildings account for 26 per cent of global energy-related emissions, according to the International Energy Agency, which has warned that faster progress is needed to put the property sector on track to net zero by 2050.

Commercial buildings in the UK face a tough series of deadlines to upgrade their energy efficiency ratings by 2030. About 12 per cent of commercial properties missed an energy rating deadline last year, according to the Centre for Cities.

Carney warned investors about banking on these deadlines slipping. “There will be people . . . who either implicitly or explicitly think that these timelines are going to shift, or that somehow or another it is not going to become a binding constraint. But that is a big risk to take,” he said.

Carney, who is chair of Brookfield Asset Management, was speaking in London for the opening of Eden Dock, a new waterside garden at Canary Wharf, which is co-owned by the Canadian asset manager. He said adding biodiversity to urban settings was another key challenge for landlords, alongside reducing emissions.

Dutch bank ING last month warned 2,000 of its biggest clients, including commercial real estate developers and owners, that it would stop providing them with financing if they failed to make sufficient progress on tackling their climate impacts. It found that commercial real estate was a laggard compared with other sectors when it came to disclosing climate impacts.

But despite climate risks for the sector, Carney said he was not concerned about risks to financial stability from the property sector.

“I am very sanguine about commercial real estate risks in the financial sector as a whole, because the risk is more broadly spread, there is less liquidity pressures than would have come in a bank-based commercial real estate sector,” he said. “And I think that the work out process is proceeding for those assets that need to be worked out.”

Standard Life has partnered with Raindrop and launched a free-to-all pension-finding tool to help Britons track down their missing pensions.

This comes as Standard Life research has shown that 19% of people with multiple pensions believe they have lost track of at least one pension pot.

Standard Life, part of Phoenix Group, said that despite the benefits of consolidating pensions, such as a greater ability to track performance and boost understanding of how much is being saved for the future, 73% of those with more than one workplace pension said they have not consolidated.

Just under a third (32%) are unsure of how to start consolidating and 12% find the process too difficult.

It has been estimated that 2.8 million pension pots in the UK, valued at over £26.6bn, remain unclaimed. Additionally, the average person has at least 11 employers in their working lifetime.

In order to find a lost pension, a user just needs to provide their former employer’s name and the time period they worked for the company. This is in contrast to supplying details of the pension provider “as is often the case when consolidating pension pots”.

Raindrop’s technology then begins the tracing process, which on average takes just 4-6 weeks. During this time, a dedicated case manager is on-hand to provide updates on the process.

Once a person’s lost pensions have been traced, they will be better informed about their income prospects and able to take the necessary steps to prepare for their retirement.

Standard Life managing director of retail direct Dean Butler said: “We know that people who actively plan for their retirement are more confident and financially secure but if you don’t know where all your savings are, you can’t begin to calculate their value, making planning unnecessarily difficult.

“Sometimes people have a vague idea of having a pension with a previous employer, but just don’t know how to go about finding it. Our new pension-finding service removes the major hurdles that people face and allows them to regain control of their pensions savings. We want to help them trace any missing pensions, so they don’t ever lose them again and are better prepared to organise their retirement savings.”

Raindrop co-founder Vivan Shridharani added: “Millions of UK savers have lost pensions, often unsure of how to begin their search. As each new generation has more jobs than the last, the number of lost pensions continues to grow. We’re committed to helping savers, with a simple solution to easily find their lost pensions and help them better prepare for their financial future.

“By partnering with Standard Life, one of the UK’s largest pensions providers, we hope to empower savers to locate lost pots and take control of their long-term financial planning.”

Since the launch of Raindrop, a pension-finding platform, in 2021, it has located over £325m in lost pension savings across more than 27,000 pots.

In order to obtain these results, Standard Life commissioned Opinium to conduct research among 2,000 UK adults between 6 and 10 September 2024.

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free

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

Star corporate raider Carl Icahn has offered his longtime chief financial officer, Ted Papapostolou, a juicy new contract extension to 2028. But it comes with some onerous strings attached.

There’s no doubt Papapostolou deserves a payday, having spent a lot of time extinguishing fires recently. First came last year’s short attack by Hindenburg Research, which sent the shares of Icahn Enterprises LP (IEP) tumbling. More recently, Papapostolou had to settle SEC charges over pledging company securities as collateral for personal loans.

So, Icahn is paying up. He’s granted Papapostolou a $2.2mn salary package, plus an incentive-based package worth up to $17mn that rewards him if IEP recovers some of its value. Unfortunately for us, Papapostolou has offered his omertà in exchange. 

According to the offer letter (FTAV’s emphasis below):

You further agree not to write a book or article about the Designated Entities, Mr. Icahn, his family members, or any of the respective affiliates of any of the foregoing, in any media and not to publish or cause to be published in any media, any Confidential Information, and further agree to keep confidential and not to disclose to any third party, including, but not limited to, newspapers, authors, publicists, journalists, bloggers, gossip columnists, producers, directors, script writers, media personalities, and the like, in any and all media or communication methods, any Confidential Information.

It’s a shame Papapostolou is barred from sharing the internal workings of Icahn’s empire with gossip columnists, authors and publicists. Even his friends and family seemingly won’t hear a peep, except the fact that, yes, he once served as chief financial officer of IEP. 

In furtherance of the foregoing, you agree that following the cessation of your employment hereunder, the sole and only statements you will make about or concerning any or all of: Mr. Icahn, his family members, and the Designated Entities . . . is to acknowledge that you are or were employed by the Company, and were its Chief Financial Officer.

But seems Papapostolou missed out on some of the more restrictive provisions affecting Icahn employees, like onetime chief financial officer of Icahn-owned refinery CVR Energy, Tracy Jackson. She agreed to keep the terms of the 2021 separation between herself, a spouse and a tax attorney (and a government agency, in the event of a subpoena). 

We’d also love to know what Aris Kekedjian, a former General Electric executive who worked as IEP’s chief executive for just seven months before resigning, has to say. The same goes for David Willetts, who moved over to run Icahn-owned car mechanic Pep Boys after a brief stint at the top (his stint at Pep Boys proved equally brief, with the company announcing last week that Willetts has already left). 

The circle running IEP is small, with under 50 employees at the Sunny Isles Beach, Florida-based conglomerate according to LinkedIn. 

Hopefully a few escape the no-book no-blog agreement so a lucky reporter can package the tale of IEP into a warts-and-all bestseller, rather than a bland, hagiographic HBO series.

Further reading:

– Icahn seen clearly now the gains have gone (FTAV)

MILLIONS will see their energy bill rise by £149 as Ofgem’s new price cap comes into force today, Tuesday, October 1.

Households previously paid £1,568 a year but the figure is now set to rise by nearly £150 to £1,717.

Around 29million customers on their energy providers’ standard variable tariff (SVT) are expected to see their bills rise.

Ofgem updates its price cap every three months, setting a ceiling on how much suppliers can charge for each unit of gas or electricity.

It was created five years ago to protect customers from being overcharged by suppliers.

This includes your standing charge which is a daily fixed amount you have to pay no matter how much electricity you use.

But it is worth bearing in mind that the £1,717 figure is just an estimation given by the energy regulator.

It is calculated assuming that a typical household uses 2,700 kWh of electricity and 11,500 kWh of gas over a 12-month period.

Those who use less electricity will pay less, while those who use more will have to pay more.

The exact amount you pay is based on several factors, including where you live, your supplier and how you pay for your gas and electricity.

There are 14 different “Distribution Network Operators” across Britain, who can dictate your energy costs.

For example, those in Northern Scotland will see their bills rise to £1724.47 up from £1577.66 starting today.

While households in North West of England will see their bills increase to £1,689 up from £1,533.

Those in the South West will pay the most, with the average annual bill costing £100 more at £1,766 a year.

These varying prices occur because generating gas or energy is cheaper in some areas than others.

Your regional standing charge, which is how much you pay to stay connected to the grid, also varies depending on where you live.

For example, those living in the northern region (North East England) pay the highest standing charge in the country.

A typical household here will now be charged £379 as of today.

While prices are expected to be high for the next three months, experts are predicting a fall come January.

Cornwall Insight has published a new forecast predicting a £20 drop in the new year to £1,697.

Dr Craig Lowrey, principal consultant at Cornwall Insight said October’s rise is a “temporary blip”.

He said: “Typically some of the coldest months of the year, often bring with them the biggest energy bills, and – while our latest forecast is welcome news – it remains subject to the volatile wholesale gas and electricity markets.”

Why you could be charged more

If you are worried about the price of the regional standing charge in your area, it is worth being aware of these tips.

For example, taking regular meter readings can let you update your supplier on your energy usage so you are not overcharged.

It is important to take a meter reading around the time of the price cap change to make sure all your energy usage up until that point is charged at the lower rate.

If you are confused about how to take a meter reading you can read our article here.

If you have a smart meter then you do not need to take a reading as this does it automatically.

You should contact your supplier if you are keen to install one as it is usually done free of charge.

There are also a number of government support packages available to those who are struggling financially.

The Sun recently published an article on all the bill help worth over £5,000 which you can check out here.

Make sure you pay the lowest rates

There are two types of rates that you can pay on your energy bill, fixed or a standard variable rate.

A fix is when you lock in a set price for a certain period which is usually 12 months.

That is different to a standard variable rate which can go up or down depending on Ofgem’s price cap, which changes every three months.

A number of energy suppliers have reduced the rate of their fixed deals, meaning customers have a chance to save if they switch.

For example, EDF has launched a 1,568-a-year fixed deal for a typical energy user paying by direct debit.

This deal is £149 cheaper than the upcoming cap.

It is worth bearing in mind that you will still be charged more if you use more energy.

You check out the best fix rate deals below:

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free

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

Washington believes that Iran is “preparing to imminently launch a ballistic missile attack against Israel”, a US official said on Tuesday, threatening “severe consequences” if the attack were carried out.

The warning came as Israel launched a ground offensive in Lebanon on Tuesday, intensifying its campaign against Hizbollah after launching waves of devastating air strikes against the Tehran-backed militant group.

The official added that the US would support Israel in defending itself against such an attack.

“The United States has indications that Iran is preparing to imminently launch a ballistic missile attack against Israel,” the official said. “We are actively supporting defensive preparations to defend Israel against this attack. A direct military attack from Iran against Israel will carry severe consequences for Iran.”

The US embassy in Jerusalem has ordered all of its employees to shelter in place.

Daniel Hagari, Israel’s military spokesperson, confirmed that Israel had been warned by Washington but added that the country had not identified any aerial threat from Iran at present. He said Israel was prepared for all scenarios.

The comments follow a dramatic two-week period, during which Israel assassinated Hizbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah and launched a bombing campaign that has killed more than 1,000 people in Lebanon and displaced as many as 1mn.

The regional escalation has been accompanied by a ratcheting up of Israel’s rhetoric, with officials talking about “defeating” Hizbollah and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledging last week to “change the balance of power in the region for years”.

In April, Iran fired more than 300 missiles and drones at Israel after a suspected Israeli strike hit its embassy compound in Damascus, killing several senior Iranian commanders.

The Iranian barrage was clearly telegraphed and caused limited damage since Israel’s air defences, supported by the US, the UK and France, intercepted most of the projectiles before they reached Israeli air space.

Israel responded with a missile attack on an air base near the Iranian city of Isfahan, but the tit-for-tat exchange was contained, with neither side wanting a further escalation.

But, as Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza has lowered in intensity, Israeli forces have stepped up strikes on Iranian proxies in the region.

The US’s latest warning will heighten fears that Israel’s escalating offensive against Hizbollah will trigger an all-out regional war.

Following the first reports of the missile warning, Brent crude, the international benchmark oil price, rose 2.9 per cent to $73.75 a barrel on Tuesday, after having previously traded down on the day. Gold prices also rose.

Iranian leaders have repeatedly said they do not want to be drawn into a broader Middle East war, adding that the Islamic republic would not fall into what they have described as Israel’s “trap”.

Analysts say the regime’s priority is ensuring the republic’s survival and that it is wary of being dragged into a direct conflict with Israel that would also pull in the US.

But the republic arms and supports militant groups across the region that have attacked Israel.

Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araghchi said on Tuesday that Tehran wanted political “collective action” by countries that seek “stability and calm in the region”. He called on the international community to stop Israel’s escalation in the region.

The US has been deploying additional forces to the region since Israel assassinated Nasrallah on Friday and ramped up its bombing campaign on Lebanon. It has about 40,000 troops in the region.

Additional reporting by Raya Jalabi and Rafe Uddin