Welcome to Money, Sky News‘ consumer and personal finance hub. Today: our latest Women In Business interview and Savings Guide, plus markets bounce back after Donald Trump retreats from his threat to sack the Fed chair and a look at a UK island up for sale for £25m.
Wednesday 23 April 2025 15:20, UK
Free football sessions for children aged five to 11 are taking place across the UK until 27 July.
The sessions are available at more than 1,600 locations and include one-hour of coaching each week from FA-qualified coaches.
They’re the result of a partnership between McDonald’s and British football associations, but there’s no obligation to buy or eat anything at the fast food chain.
How do I get involved?
Sign up by filling in a form on the McDonald’s website under „Fun Football“ here.
You can register up to five children. The sessions are aimed at beginners, focusing on basic techniques.
You’ll need to bring your own clothing and footwear.
Slots are booked on a first-come, first-served basis, with sessions in Northern Ireland already full.
Children can attend as many sessions as they please.
A private island off Essex that’s hosted the likes of Rihanna, Jude Law and Stormzy is up for sale for £25m.
The 380-acre Osea Island is on the estuary of the Blackwater river in Essex and has been described as England’s version of Sir Richard Branson’s Necker Island.
In recent years the island, now owned by music producer and Sugarbabes founder Nigel Frieda, has become a renowned celebrity party destination.
Under his ownership, singers including Rihanna and actors such as Law have rented areas of the island and partied there.
It was also the spot where Stormzy wrote almost all of his most recent album and where Olly Murs got married in 2023.
For anyone prepared to fork out for the freehold to Osea, you get plenty for your money.
The island features 90 bedrooms and 61 bathrooms spread over 38 properties with 4,394 sq m of space, including a village pub, a light aircraft landing strip, boating access and numerous beaches.
One of the estate agents listing the island, which is cut off at high tide, said there had already been considerable interest.
„We already have several bids on it and some of them are in excess of the guide price,“ Simon Pelling, of Fine and Country, who is the listing agent alongside Ed Casson, said.
The government raked in a record amount of inheritance tax last year, the latest figures from HMRC show.
People paid a total of £8.2bn in inheritance tax between April 2024 and March 2025 – up from £7.4bn the year before.
Over the past 10 years, revenue has increased by £4.4bn.
Inheritance tax thresholds are frozen until 2030, which could mean an increasing number find themselves paying hefty bills.
„Property prices have grown rapidly in recent years, particularly in areas such as London and the South East, which in many cases will leave little to no room for additional assets to be left to loved ones before the tax is applied,“ said Shaun Moore, tax and financial planning expert at wealth management firm Quilter.
„Inheritance tax has long since been a deeply unpopular tax, and its reputation is unlikely to improve any time soon.
„What was once viewed as a tax on only the wealthiest of families has spread to middle income families, many of which may not even realise they are affected.“
When looking at the total tax receipts for the year, HMRC collected more than £857bn – a 3.4% increase from the year before.
Income tax, capital gains tax and national insurance contributions accounted for 57% of that at £486.9bn.
That’s £17.6bn more than the same period last year.
„Frozen income tax thresholds, which have now remained stagnant since 2021, have seen an increasing number of people paying income tax for the first time, as well as dragging many into higher rates each year,“ Moore added.
„Without an explicit tax hike, and therefore without technically breaking its promise not to increase taxes on working people, the government has generated billions in extra income.
„What’s more, with employer national insurance payments rising from this month, this tax take will continue to climb.“
British workers are among the saddest, loneliest and most disengaged in all of Europe, according to a new workplace report.
Only workers in Northern Cyprus are said to be sadder than Brits, 26% of whom reported daily feelings of sadness and 17% daily loneliness in the latest „State of the Global Workplace“ report by Gallup.
According to the survey, 41% of British workers felt daily stress in 2024. That means the UK workforce counts itself as being more stressed out than in Ukraine, where only 28% of workers reported daily stress last year.
The report also showed UK workers were among the most disengaged in Europe. Only 10% of British workers said they felt engaged at work in 2024, down from 20% in 2009 and placing the UK workforce as the 30th most disengaged in Europe.
Stressed-out managers were cited as the primary cause for the fall in employee engagement, while the groups reporting the most significant falls in engagement in the last five years were under-35s and female managers.
Pylons have knocked as much as £100,000 off the value of nearby homes across England and Wales, according to new research.
Findings shared with Money by property consultancy Allsop show the average-sized home within 500 metres of a pylon sells for around 3% less than the typical price for the area.
For homes near pylons in Sevenoaks, Kent, the potential financial loss increases to roughly £98,550, equating to a pylon penalty of more than 15%.
Those owning a home of a similar size near a pylon in Waltham Forest, north-east London, could see losses total around £81,760, while those in the New Forest could lose around £45,990.
Allsop’s research uses data from the Greater London Authority and University College London from 2023 onwards.
It matched the nearly 1.3 million residential addresses in England and Wales within 500 metres of a pylon to government house price and energy efficiency datasets.
By Sarah Taaffe-Maguire, business and economics reporter
Elon Musk has said he will spend less time with Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency after Tesla profits sank.
The billionaire said his time with the US president will „drop significantly“ from May to allocate more time to the electric car company.
It comes after first-quarter profits at Tesla sank as the company grapples with falling sales, partly due to Trump’s tariffs. It has also been suggested Musk’s links to Trump are putting off consumers.
As a special government employee, Musk was limited to 130 days in his role at DOGE, which is primarily aimed at slashing federal spending.
In April, he dismissed reports suggesting he would leave his role in the coming months, calling the rumours „fake news“.
By James Sillars, business and economics reporter
A bit of a global stock market rally is under way.
It’s all down to two trade war-linked threats easing.
Donald Trump said last night that the final tariff rate with China would come down „substantially“ from the current 145%.
He also lifted his threat of last week to fire the head of the US central bank Jay Powell – who he’d described as a „major loser“ – for failing to cut interest rates and boost the flagging US economy.
Market participants have been rightly worried that the independence of the Federal Reserve was under threat.
A relief rally began in the States yesterday evening and saw the Dow Jones Industrial Average and tech-focused Nasdaq Composite both 2.7% up by the close, erasing losses of the previous day.
Asian markets later followed that lead, with the Hang Seng in Hong Kong gaining 2.2%.
European shares were also higher, with the FTSE 100 trading 1.2% to the good at the open a short while ago.
But analysts cautioned that the gains would be limited given the lack of progress in resolving the trade war and predictions of big hits to global output by the IMF just yesterday.
Fluctuations in values are expected as the news flows from the White House shift – and shift they will.
Illegal and potentially dangerous scam „energy saving“ plugs are being sold online, an investigation has found.
The devices have been recalled several times, but Which? discovered they were still widely available.
The consumer champion tested a number of the products and found no evidence of their eco capabilities.
The plugs claim to save customers money on their electricity bills by stabilising voltage and balancing electric current to optimise the performance of household appliances.
However, Which? tested eight of the devices bought from AliExpress, Amazon, eBay, Shein, Temu and TikTok Shop and found they failed basic safety standards, meaning they are illegal and potentially dangerous.
The platforms have since removed all the listings Which? reported to them, but many identical-looking devices were still available weeks later.
One buyer who reviewed a device bought on Amazon said it was „nothing but a scam“ and that the company „should be ashamed of themselves for marketing this item and be more responsible for what they sell“.
Shein sold and shipped a device named as a „Magic Electricity-Saving Box“.
Which? said most of the items its researchers investigated contained too much lead.
Lead levels are tightly regulated because of the potential effects it can have on people’s health.
Most of the items also had unmarked non-standard capacitors, indicating they were not manufactured in the UK and therefore potentially unsafe.
What did the websites say?
Amazon said safety was a „top priority“ and that all products sold on its site need to comply with applicable laws and regulations.
eBay said consumer safety was a „top priority“ and it takes an „active approach“ to keeping its site safe, including carrying out regular audits of the products available.
„If we find an unsafe product, we remove it immediately,“ a spokeswoman said.
Shein said it takes product safety „very seriously“ and it is committed to offering „safe and reliable products to its customers“.
AliExpress said it also takes product safety „very seriously“, and has strict rules and policies in place to ensure a safe online shopping environment.
Temu said it takes a „multi-pronged approach to product monitoring“ and requires traders to meet the safety standards of the markets they are selling to.
TikTok said the safety of its customers was of of the utmost priority and that it has strict measures in place to ensure safety standards.
All of the sites removed the flagged products.
Less than 20% of all active UK companies are led by women, and the pace of new business registrations is slowing down. That’s according to analysis of Companies House data by Prowess, which also found women-led companies receive only 5.8% of all investments.
In this series, we hear from women who are bossing it in their respective fields as they tell us how they’ve overcome challenges and how others could do the same. This week, live Money reporter Jess Sharp has spoken to Abigail Tan, chief executive of St Giles Hotels Group…
„I loved the smell of a hotel. Everything about it interested me.“
That was Abigail Tan’s first memory of a hotel. She was a young girl in Malaysia and had been taken on a trip by her parents.
„Instead of spending all my time out in the beach or in the pool, I liked to jump up on the housekeeping trolleys to see what I could steal. Shampoo really interested me,“ she laughs.
In hindsight, her seemingly odd interest turned out to be a good thing.
With her grandfather running one of Malaysia’s real estate dynasties and her father now the managing director of the IGB Corporation, the parent company of St Giles, her path into the hotel business was almost fated.
But that doesn’t mean it’s been easy.
Along the way, Abigail has dealt with racism, conflict and still managed to grow St Giles into a company that operates eight hotels in five countries – and has two more in the pipeline.
She says her first „adult experience“ of the business was during her summer breaks, when she would travel from Exeter, where she was studying at the time, to London, to sit in on meetings.
„That’s when I started work here at the hotel, and realised that it wasn’t time for me to go back to Malaysia yet. 20 years later, I’m still here.“
‚The baptism of fire‘
One of her first projects involved the buying and rebranding of one of their hotels in New York, which she describes as her „baptism by fire“.
Thrown in the deep end, she was 24 having to rebrand an entire hotel, working to find suppliers, hiring a new general manager and replacing everything inside the former W hotel.
„I was still very junior… and it was challenging because New York is a completely different animal, different culture and a different way of hospitality,“ she says.
One of the most difficult situations in the American city was with labour unions.
„We shut one hotel down for renovations and they didn’t like that we weren’t using union staff. For about seven months, they camped outside our operating hotel,“ she recalls.
Some of them inflated three-storey high rats bearing her father’s face, while others covered the ground in messages that told her family to „go back to Malaysia“.
„They would sound horns and shouting in the streets. It was very chaotic for me, for staff and for customers. It was quite intimidating,“ she adds.
„They really tested my boundaries as a woman in the industry. There was a lot of conflict.“
‚I’m not the perfect leader but I want to make a difference‘
For the rest of her 20s, she spent almost six months of the year travelling back and forth between London and New York to work on the hotels, before becoming chief executive in 2018.
„It’s like being the conductor in a big orchestra, which means I needed to I know who I am as a leader and how the movements I make impact the team,“ Tan says.
„I’m not the perfect leader. We all make mistakes. We are only human.“
Despite being part of the minority of female Asian chief executives, Tan says she doesn’t view herself as such and has tried to carve the way for other women to follow in her footsteps.
Sixty percent of St Giles’s executive board and 80% of its department heads are women.
„Women need more of a voice and more representation. I went to a hotel conference many years ago and it was just all middle-aged white men in suits. I was just like, ‚how can we create more inspirational experiences?'“
Throughout the industry as a whole, she says, there should be more Asian representation.
„Having a mix of experiences and cultures is always a good think. There are lots of brands here now that are from Asia but we need to have more Asian leaders here in Europe.“
Her mission to help the homeless
Tan’s aspiration to make change doesn’t stop with inspiring women, she has also launched a charity initiative to help homeless people enter the workforce.
Hotels with Heart provides rough sleepers with a place to stay, access to a four-week training programme and guaranteed job interviews once they complete it.
„The future is not about me, it’s about who comes after me and who comes after that. I’m really proud of the academy. Everyone deserves a chance to grow and find a livelihood,“ she says.
„You can see all their confidence come back. It’s like seeing a flower bloom.“
‚Learn to navigate conflict and read this book‘
One of the keys to Tan’s success is being authentic and she says you have to set out your values and stick to them in every situation to be a great female business leader.
„If you are being your true self, it’s easier to run a business because people can feel if you are being authentic,“ she says.
She also advises that you learn how to navigate conflict and communicate through it effectively.
„A really powerful book about this is called the Culture Map. It showed you how different cultures communicate so differently.
„Some cultures want you to be more direct, some indirect and you don’t want me to end up making someone angry.“
A key part of this, she explains, is learning to apologise if you have made a mistake and holding firm if you believe you are right.
„If you think you have done something wrong, face it and lead with humility and kindness… but also if someone has done something wrong, you must be able to face the person and say that don’t think it is right.“
For this week’s guide, Anna Bowes, savings expert from The Private Office, looks at what’s happening with savings bonds.
Earlier this month, NS&I increased the interest rates on some of its savings bonds and relaunched two popular products.
It upped the rate on its two-year bonds and three-year bonds to 4% and 4.1% respectively, and brought back its one-year bond paying 4.05% and a five-year bond paying 4.06%.
Bowes said the state-owned savings bank’s decision to hike rates is presumably a response to the government’s decision in the Spring Budget to raise NS&I’s net financing target – the amount it needs to raise for 2024–25 – from £9bn to £12bn.
„With a higher fundraising target, it’s not surprising that NS&I is stepping up efforts to attract savers‘ money,“ she explained.
NS&I often has competitive rates, but how is it stacking up against its competitors?
Here’s how its products look against the best rates currently on the market…
Even though these new rates are an improvement, Bowes said savers can still find better returns elsewhere, especially if you’re happy to look beyond high street names.
„There are many providers, albeit lesser-known, offering more competitive rates on fixed-term bonds, notice accounts and easy access options,“ she said.
NS&I’s unmatched and unique advantage
It’s worth noting, though, that NS&I products do offer a unique advantage – all of the funds deposited are 100% backed by the Treasury.
This means they are not limited to the Financial Services Compensation Scheme’s usual £85,000 limit per person, per institution.
„This security is unmatched and gives real peace of mind, especially for those with large sums to put away,“ said Bowes.
What matters most to you?
When deciding what sort of product you want to go for, she said it’s all based on what matters most to you.
„If absolute security is your priority and you have a large cash holding, NS&I is a useful option. But if maximising your return is the aim, and you’re willing to split your savings between different providers, there are certainly stronger rates out there,“ she explained.
Cash platforms are another valuable tool worth considering.
„They allow you to manage savings across multiple banks with just one login, often making it easier to stay within protection limits and to switch between products when better rates become available,“ Bowes added.
„This can be especially useful for those with larger cash holdings who want both convenience and competitive returns.“
Be the first to get Breaking News
Install the Sky News app for free
Money blog: Private UK island loved by Rihanna and Stormzy up for sale – here's what you get for £25m – Sky News
