The AFI are celebrating International Women’s Day 2024 by highlighting the amazing work of women in the fencing industry – read the full article here

Budget for Long Term Growth

The Chancellor delivered his Spring Budget yesterday, promising a ‘high wage, high skilled economy’ through more investment, lower taxes and better public services. Billed as the ‘Budget for Long Term Growth’, the key points for businesses in construction included:

• An extension to full expensing to include leased assets, when fiscal conditions allow, with draft legislation due to be published shortly
• Maintaining last year’s fuel duty cut of 5 pence until March 2025 and freezing fuel duty rates for 2024/25
• Reducing the employee National Insurancerate from 10% to 8%, and the self‐employee National Insurance rate from 8% to 6%, from 6 April 2024
• Increasing the VAT registration thresholdfrom £85,000 to £90,000 from 1 April 2024
• Extending the Recovery Loan Scheme with a further £200 million, to be known as the Growth Guarantee Scheme, providing SMEs with Government‐backed loans that have better repayment terms and lengths than the wider market.

The Chancellor also announced additional investment in new housing projects, an extension of the Long‐Term Plans for Towns to 20 new places, and a new £160 million deal to acquire two sites to develop nuclear power, stating that ‘stimulating investment is the most effective way to raise productivity and therefore wages and living standards’

Final Countdown to Open Doors 2024

With just over a week to go until the start of Open Doors 2024 on Monday 18 March, we are looking forward to welcoming thousands of visitors at events across Great Britain during the week!

Net Zero Champions

Applications for the next round of CO₂nstruct Zero Business Champions are open until Wednesday 20 March, and Build UK is encouraging all members to sign up and support the CLC to collate the actions being taken across the whole construction supply chain to drive carbon out of the sector.