The Chartered Institute of Payroll Professionals
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The apprenticeship scheme has two important objectives. One, as the noble Lord touched on, is to give young people a choice of opportunities as they enter their career — training, work experience and so forth. The other is to give our employers the skills they need in their workforce. The scheme is currently balancing those two things. I am happy to reassure my noble friend that we have no plans to do away with the levy. Indeed, as I said, based on the OBR forecast we expect it to increase to £2.7 billion in 2024-25. The levy is part of a wider strategy to offer more flexible opportunities, such as modular learning and the lifelong loan entitlement, to potential employees and address the skills gaps of employers more effectively. Again, if we look at the trend in the use of the levy, we have seen an increase in adoption and use of the levy by employers, both levy-paying employers and much smaller enterprises. We are committed to offering all sorts of flexible and shorter courses, a nd to funding those to meet key skills gaps. We think this is a critical part of our strategy.’’
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UK inflation falls to 8.7% Published: 24 May 2023 Emailed: 24 May 2023
The UK inflation rate has dropped to 8.7%, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS). For the first time in eight months the Consumer Price Inflation (CPI) rate is in single digits.
CPI is the rate at which the prices of goods and services bought by households rise or fall. It is estimated by using price indices . The ONS keeps track of prices, in a ‘’shopping basket’’ of around 700 popular goods and services bought by households. This is reviewed every year, so that the index is representative and to up to date. The CPI rose by 8.7% in the 12 months to April 2023, down from 10.1% in March 2023. On a monthly basis, CPI rose by 1.2% in April 2023, compared with a rise of 2.5% in April 2022. According to data released by the ONS today, electricity and gas prices contributed 1.42 percentage points to the fall in annual inflation in April as last April’s rise dropped out of the annual comparison. However, food, alcoholic beverages and tobacco prices continue to rise. CPI inflation was 9.0% in April 2022 and therefore inflation still remains uncomfortably high and is falling at a much slower speed than expected.
How will interest rates change in the future? Keep an eye out for our update on the upcoming Bank of England bank rates, set to be released on 22 June 2023.
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Major UK companies hit by a cyber attack Published: 6 June 2023 Emailed: 7 June 2023
Renowned UK companies such as BBC, British Airways, Boots and Aer Lingus are among the organisations that have been affected by a mass hack. Staff at the companies have been warned about a data breach that impacted Zellis, a payroll provider to some of the largest organisations across the UK and Ireland. Personal information such as names, dates of birth, and national insurance (NI) numbers were affected by the breach. It appeared last week that a vulnerability in the file transfer system ‘MOVEit’, produced by Progress Software, had been exploited by cyber criminals. Allowing the hackers to access information on a range of global companies using MOVEit transfer. MOVEit is a software designed to move sensitive files securely and is popular around the world with most of its customers in the US.
It has been further reported that, a Russian- linked criminal group named ‘Clop’ has claimed responsibility for the breaches. However, currently there are no reports of ransom demands being sought or money stolen.
Zellis has said:
cipp.org.uk
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