Everyone aged 50 or over in England can now book a coronavirus vaccination

It has been announced that everyone aged 50 and over should now book their COVID vaccination online via the NHS website.

For the full story click here.

Number of small businesses in distress triple pre-Covid level

With the lockdown continuing, small businesses are receiving the most impact with nearly 135,000 businesses in trouble prompting warnings of a “calm before the storm”.

Even with the introduction of new government support for small businesses, there are still three times more businesses struggling than before the pandemic hit.

For a small business owner, there are 5 warning signs that indicate your business is in trouble:

For the full story, click here.

Visa to hike interchange fees for UK customers in post-Brexit move

Visa will this week notify clients of an increase in fees. Most notably, interchange fees will increase to 1.5% for online credit card payments, but debit card transactions will also have an increase from 0.2% to 1.15%.

This will mainly affect online transactions with “EU based companies within sectors such as online retail, hospitality and travel.”

For the full story, click here.

Cut in electric car subsidy criticised as ‘wrong move at the wrong time’

Despite aiming for a halt to sales of new petrol and diesel cars by 2030, the Government have said that the grants for the purchase of an electric vehicle will no longer be available for vehicles bought by drivers that can afford it.

Reports suggest that the Government have now reduced the grants for plug in cars from £3,000 to £2,500. “They have also decided to cut taxpayer subsidies for electric vehicles and scrap help for those costing more than £35,000.”

With these changes, it puts the UK even further behind other markets and further away from their target.

For the full story, click here.