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Britain’s borrowing hit £303.1 billion ($420.14bn) in March, after emergency pandemic support measures sent the annual figure to the highest level since the end of the Second World War.
The surge in public sector debt over the financial year, which ended last month, was £246bn higher than in the previous 12 months, with borrowing at 14.5 per cent of economic output, the highest ratio since 1946 when the figure was 15.2 per cent, according to the Office for National Statistics.
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Borrowing in March alone hit £28bn, a record high for that month, with the overall numbers reflecting the sharp rise in public sector spending and tax cuts as UK finance minister Rishi Sunak tried to offset the economic hit from the Covid-19 crisis.
LONDON BRIEFING: UK retail sales bounce in March before shop reopening lse.co.uk - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from lse.co.uk Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
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April 21, 2021
LONDON: Britain’s unemployment rate has fallen for the second month in a row and job vacancies surged as businesses prepared to reopen after lockdown in a sign of hope for the battered jobs market, official figures have shown.
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said the jobless rate fell to 4.9 per cent between December and February, down from 5 per cent in the previous three months.
Most economists had expected it to rise to 5.1 per cent.
But the figures also showed the number of workers on UK payrolls fell by 56,000 in March after three months of increases, as the pandemic continued to take its toll. Overall there were 813,000 fewer workers on payrolls than in March 2020.
By Hannah Neary, Local Democracy Reporter
Pontardawe Leisure Centre [Google Maps, available for LDRS] LEISURE centre staff are calling on Neath Port Talbot (NPT) Council to take over the running of local services rather than transfer them to a private company. Council workers want the local authority to run leisure services but plans are underway for a private company to take over. Leisure services in NPT, including Pontardawe Leisure Centre and Swimming Pool, are currently run by Celtic Leisure, a private limited company, on behalf of the council. The council gave the company a ten-year contract to run the services from 2015, but in 2020 it decided to look for a new service provider for the next 25 years; the contract with Celtic Leisure ends in September.