UK news

UK news

The chancellor will assess self-assessment tax returns for the 2025-26 tax year, with findings expected to be published in 2026. It marks the first time the government has publicly confirmed that it is formally evaluating the consequences of ending the centuries-old tax regime. Non-dom status, which was scrapped in April, previously allowed wealthy UK residents to avoid paying British tax on income and assets held overseas by claiming their permanent home was abroad.

December is traditionally one of the quietest months for Channel crossings, as a combination of low temperatures and stormy weather makes the journey particularly difficult. Poor visibility and less daylight have also been cited as factors influencing the crossings. The most arrivals recorded in December was 3,254 in 2024; 2,163 people have arrived so far this month. The arrivals on Saturday bring the total number of people who have crossed the Channel this year to 41,455.

Ever since Team GB's velodrome successes at the 2008 Olympics, campaigners and government ministers have confidently predicted that Britain is about to become a nation of cyclists. There is just one problem: for the most part, it has not happened. Apart from a very concentrated spike in bike use during Covid, the level of cycle trips in England has stayed broadly static for years, and things do not appear to be changing.

Landowner, City of London Corporation (CLC) has chosen Daisy Green to run cafes at Queen's Park, Golders Hill Park, Parliament Hill Lido and Parliament Hill Fields from spring 2026, after putting these leases out to tender. Emma Fernandez, who co-runs three of the sites, said the CLC was "destroying this fabric which is holding together the community". The corporation said Daisy Green, would bring new investment to the sites, and said its remarketing exercise was carried out in an "open, inclusive, widely publicised" way.

My thoughts are with the victim's family at this unimaginably difficult time. Our investigation is continuing at pace as we work to establish the full circumstances around this incident. Were you in the area or on Tollgate Gardens on Friday, 19 December? Do you have any mobile phone or dash cam footage of individuals in the area around the time of the incident? If so, please come forward and speak to police.

While this has obviously been a very difficult decision - and it is the greatest honour of my life to represent Glasgow - I do not wish for a personal friendship to become a distraction. I am grateful to have had the opportunity to serve, and I remain committed to returning a Scottish Labour government next year.

Mr Manknell found that many working at the prison, including senior management staff, were unaware that Belmarsh had a policy which meant racist prisoners should be marked as high risk and should only be placed in cells with prisoners of the same ethnicity. Following an inquest into Mr Ghuman's death, it was found that Belmarsh failed when carrying out Hilden's CSRA assessment in 2019 after he moved to the prison from HMP High Down.

From March, banks and card providers will be allowed to set their own maximum limits for contactless payments, including the option of removing the cap altogether, without requiring customers to enter their PIN. The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has also encouraged firms to give customers greater control, such as allowing them to set their own limits or disable contactless payments entirely.

As part of a UK crackdown on immigration, most international students have been prevented from bringing their dependants. Shortly after Houbi's story, the UK government made a U-turn on its policy, stating it would support the evacuation of dependants on a case-by-case basis. Houbi and her family have now reached Jordan and will shortly travel to the UK. They are the only family travelling together from Gaza whose evacuation the British government has facilitated.

Foreign nationals working as prison officers in the UK have been given a temporary exemption from new visa rules, following warnings some jails were facing a staffing crisis. Prisons have increasingly been relying on overseas recruits, particularly from Nigeria and Ghana. But organisations representing officers had warned jails faced losing thousands of staff, after the government increased the minimum salary requirement for a skilled worker visa.

From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.

We are working through the first version of the integrated plan we hoped would give us that [assurance]. I can tell you now that [plan] goes beyond March 2028 and it goes beyond our cost profile, and we are working to improve that,

Figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) showed public sector net borrowing the difference between spending and income was 11.7bn last month, 1.9bn less than in the same month a year earlier. In the first snapshot since the November budget, the reading was above City predictions of a 10bn deficit. Tom Davies, an ONS senior statistician, said: Despite an increase in spending, this month's borrowing was the lowest November for four years.

Penalty fares issued on the Docklands Light Railway (DLR) are set to double this year, as the number of prosecutions for fare evasion on the London Underground has risen to its highest level in six years. Between April and November 2026, a total of 4,472 penalties were handed out for avoiding paying on the DLR, compared with 2,571 in the year leading to March 2025.

A village in Lancashire has been hit by a radiator rattling earthquake for the second time in little over two weeks. Residents of Silverdale, a small coastal village located five miles south of the Cumbria border, reported the now strangely familiar feeling of rattling and shaking in their homes at 5.03am as a 2.5-magnitude earthquake hit the area with its epicentre 1.6 miles (2.6km) off the coast.

'Williams committed an appalling crime and yet his prison sentence is paltry. 'A five year sentence, reduced further under the early release scheme, is not justice. I am writing to the Attorney General asking that it is reconsidered.'

Highlights on show will include the Queen's 1947 Norman Hartnell wedding dress, her 1953 coronation gown, a Balmoral tartan kilt, and a 1934 bridesmaid dress worn by the Queen as a child. Clothing by contemporary designers - Erdem, Richard Quinn and Christopher Kane - will highlight the Queen's later wardrobe and her continued influence on the fashion industry. Visitors will get to

For those who didn't have the privilege of knowing Aria, she was the most beautiful little soul happy-go-lucky, full of light, and joy. She loved to sing and dance, and she took such pride in dressing up, always wanting to look just like her mummy. The loss of Aria has devastated us beyond words. Our hearts are broken in a way we never imagined possible.

Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging. At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.

Police in the United Kingdom have made their first arrests since announcing their intent to crack down on people making public calls to globalise the Intifada after Australia's Bondi Beach attack, speciously linking largely peaceful protests against Israel's genocidal war with a deadly targeting of a Jewish festival. London's Metropolitan Police posted on X late on Wednesday that it had made four arrests at pro-Palestinian protests held outside the Ministry of Justice in Westminster, all involving the alleged shouting or chanting of slogans involving calls for intifada.

I go into schools all the time, and what teachers have been saying to me for a number of years is that they are seeing growing concerns around the access to the pornography that their pupils see, and some of the attitudes that come from what they are seeing, misogynistic attitudes displayed towards teachers, Phillips told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

The closure of the camp is a day of very mixed emotions for everyone who has been involved in supporting the residents.