The first four scale-up visa licences have been approved by the Home Office three months after the scheme began, prompting lawyers to question the slow take up. Macademia, a children’s educational TV and games producer based in Arkley, north London, was the first to be approved after it applied for the licence to bring an […]Read More

Barclays has been fined £8.4 million by the payments industry watchdog for failing to be transparent with retailers about the fees they were being charged to use its card services. The Payments Systems Regulator (PSR) said the FTSE 100 bank had breached the so-called interchange fee rules between the end of 2015 and 2018. “During […]Read More

Ministers have called on Britain’s biggest rail union to be “altruistic” and suspend strike action over Christmas and new year amid warnings that it will cost the economy more than £1.7 billion. The RMT union is planning eight days of strikes before Christmas and after the new year as part of the longest and most […]Read More

ToDate, a ‘same day’ dating app which prioritises secure online dating, has launched in the UK. All users that sign up for ToDate have to be fully ID verified and approved via AWS photo recognition software, which eliminates catfishing and boosts online safety. ToDate has partnered with Credas to undertake the identity verification, and each […]Read More

Proposed Labour plans to help small businesses get their unpaid invoices paid on time is “exactly what the UK’s 5.5m SMEs need”, according to the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB). As it stands, more than £20bn in unpaid invoices are outstanding at any one time, costing small businesses £684m. Labour noted that late payments also […]Read More

Decentralized applications (dApps) are growing in number thanks to the mainstream breakthrough of blockchain technology, which happened on the back of the 2021 NFT boom. DApps are powered by smart contracts and are the future of the internet, which is often referred to as Web 3.0. dApps are managed by a community of nodes (computers), […]Read More

Ofcom has appointed a former executive from Google to oversee its new role as regulator for online safety, ahead of new laws to police the internet which are due to be introduced in the UK next spring. Gill Whitehead was a member of Google’s UK management group and also ran the Digital Regulation Co-operation Forum, […]Read More

Ministers will make it harder for new properties to be turned into holiday homes under plans to see off a Tory rebellion on planning rules. Michael Gove, the housing secretary, is in talks with a group of up to 60 Conservative MPs who are threatening to inflict a string of Commons defeats on the government […]Read More

Further train strikes have been announced by rail staff, stoking fears of severe travel disruption for millions of passengers over the festive period as the transport system is struck by widescale industrial action. It comes as RMT announced that security staff working for Eurostar will strike for four days in the run-up to Christmas, action […]Read More

The Swedish fast-fashion chain H&M is to cut 1,500 jobs across its global operations as part of efforts to save 2bn Swedish Kroner (£158m) a year, amid slowing sales and rising costs for clothing retailers. The group, which operates more than 4,600 stores in 70 countries with chains including Cos, Monki and Arket as well […]Read More