Nearly two million households have saved an average of £2,600 each this year by switching to their mortgage lender’s standard variable rate at the end of fixed-rate deals, according to the Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML).
Standard variable rate mortgages are usually more expensive than fixed-rate loans but have been kept low as they ...
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- Friday, October 21, 2011, 12:04
- Featured, Housing & real estate
Private rents in England and Wales continued to rise last month, according to the latest report from LSL Property Services.
Average rents rose by 0.7% in September to reach a newly monthly high of £718, piling more pressure on potential first-time buyers unable to get a foot on the property ladder.
The increase means that ...
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- Thursday, October 20, 2011, 12:15
- Energy, Featured
Fuel poverty will kill nearly 3,000 people in England and Wales this year as soaring energy prices prevent vulnerable people from heating their homes, according to a government-commissioned report.
The Hills Fuel Poverty Review found that if fuel poverty accounts for 10% of all winter deaths – a conservative estimate ...
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- Wednesday, October 19, 2011, 11:44
- debt, Featured, Personal Finance
The Office of Fair Trading (OFT) has published guidance warning debt collectors not to contact people through social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook in pursuit of payment.
The new rules, which apply to all businesses, engaged in the recovery of consumer credit debts, including banks, law firms and tracing agents as well as ...
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- Tuesday, October 18, 2011, 15:54
- Banking, Consumer rights, Featured, Insurance
Consumer complaints to the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) rose sharply in the three months to the end of September, according to figures published today.
Complaints about financial products excluding payment protection insurance (PPI) rose by 24% in the third quarter of the year, taking the total number of complaints for this period to 31,386, compared to ...
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In a move that echoes Norman Tebbit’s demand for the unemployed to “get on your bike”, the coalition is to launch a “house swap” programme to allow the jobless to relocate in search of employment.
The scheme will provide help to those living in social housing to uproot their families and move to another ...
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- Friday, October 14, 2011, 11:18
- Consumer rights, Energy, Featured
The net annual profit big energy firms make on each customer rose to £125 in October, says Ofgem.
The regulator announced that the average amount energy suppliers make per customer rose by 733% from £15 in June after a raft of price hikes across the industry.
Ofgem said the average dual-fuel bill has increased by ...
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- Thursday, October 13, 2011, 10:51
- Featured, Household Finances, Shopping
One in six parents has gone without a meal to put food on the table for their family, according to research commissioned by
Oxfam.
The study, carried out by Ipsos MORI on behalf of the charity, found that 80% of people living in poverty in the UK have been affected by rapidly rising food prices ...
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Consumers are less likely to be disturbed in their homes after both British Gas and Scottish & Southern Energy announced that they had permanently ended the use of unsolicited doorstep sales techniques.
The move comes after consumer groups and an all-party Commons Energy and Climate Change Select Committee raised concerns about the tactics employed by door-to-door ...
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Changes to the tax and benefits systems introduced by the coalition government will leave nearly a quarter of children in absolute poverty by the end of the decade, according to a new report from the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS).
The thinktank forecasts that levels of absolute poverty will rise by about 600,000 children and 800,000 ...
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