How local councils can use community wealth building to protect high street jobs

I have spent years covering policy and public services across Britain, and few issues feel as immediate and human as staffing in care homes. When immigration rules change, the impact ripples through corridors where people live and the communities that support them. I want to walk you through how recent and proposed immigration policy shifts will reshape staffing in UK care homes — what managers, staff and families should expect, and what...

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I’ve spent years travelling through northern England’s former industrial heartlands — from the terraced streets around Rotherham’s steelworks to the shipyards by the Tyne and the quieter manufacturing estates outside Sunderland. What strikes me most is how visible the potential is: vacant factory shells next to thriving small firms, once-proud high streets where a new café sits beside a boarded shop, and communities that still have the...

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I’ve spent years reporting from councils, hospitals and GP surgeries across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and one thing is constant: people want to know when they’ll see a doctor. The government’s new NHS workforce plan promises more staff and faster access, but the real question for readers is not the national headline — it’s how this will change waiting times at your local GP surgery. I’ve been digging into the...

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I’ve been tracking energy policy and its real‑world effects for years, and the latest changes to the UK energy price cap feel like one of those moments where policy, markets and everyday business survival collide. If you run a café, a small production shop, a hair salon or a micro‑manufacturing unit, you’re likely asking: what does the energy price cap actually mean for my cashflow, and what practical steps can I take to survive and, if...

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When I tried Apple's Vision Pro for the first time, I wasn't just curious about a new gadget — I was thinking about the people I know who design sets for theatre, edit films in cramped flats, run small creative agencies in Manchester, or teach typography at a university in Bristol. The Vision Pro looks like a consumer device on the surface, but it contains features that could reshape how creative work is organised, distributed and experienced...

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Campaigning has always been as much about storytelling as it is about organisation. But over the past 18 months I’ve watched the machinery of British electoral politics absorb artificial intelligence in ways that feel both familiar and unnerving. From hyper-targeted social ads to AI-generated leaflets, campaigns are using toolkits that would have been science fiction a few years ago. As someone who follows politics and tech for a living, I...

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I still remember the first time I had to explain to a regional reporter what the BBC licence fee debate meant for their patch. They were worried, rightly, about shrinking budgets, staff redundancies and the risk that their storytelling would be drowned out. That conversation has replayed itself in newsrooms across the UK ever since licence fee reform re-entered political debate — and for good reason. The fate of the BBC’s funding is not just...

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