Business
Will we see signs of economic growth in 2026?
Andrew SinclairEast of England political editor, Colchester
Andrew Sinclair/BBCOpinion polls suggest just over half of voters see the economy and the cost of living as the most important issues facing the country, while local chambers of commerce say business confidence is at its lowest level for some time.
How the government addresses these two key issues will dominate politics in 2026 and have a major bearing on whether Sir Keir Starmer is still Prime Minister by the end of the year.
Will we see clear signs of economic growth in 2026 after a year of flatlining, to give businesses confidence to invest and employ more people? Will the measures announced in November’s budget, such as raising the minimum wage, scrapping the two-child benefit cap and removing some of the so-called “green taxes” from energy bills, make voters feel better off?
Staff at food banks are on the frontline of the cost of living crisis, while the hospitality sector is one of the East’s main employers. How do they see the year ahead?
‘The new normal’
Andrew Sinclair/BBCThere are people arriving at Colchester’s Foodbank every few minutes. The charity’s 11 centres, which are dotted around the town, help as many as 3,000 people every month.
“The stories all come back to not having enough money to buy food and the choice between putting food on the table or heating the house” says co-director Nikki Ranson.
“We have schoolteachers coming in, we have police officers and nurses. We had a nurse not so long ago who always grabs all the overtime [she can get] but hadn’t been able to for a few weeks and was in dire straits.
“We’re supposed to be an emergency food service that is supposed to be a three-day food parcel a couple of times a year. We’ve become a normal. We’re now a go-to and that’s not right.”
According to the Trussell Trust anti-poverty charity, 332,500 food parcels were handed out across the East of England in the last year. This was a 5% decline on the previous year.
Ms Ranson says the changes announced in the budget will take a while to work through to people’s pockets and she says there’s still more to be done to help with benefits and wages. She expects the numbers using her food bank to stay the same this year.
A Treasury spokesman said: “We know there’s more to do to help families with the cost of living.
“That’s why the Chancellor took action at the Budget to freeze rail fares and prescription charges and will cut £150 off the average energy bill this year.”
The number of people using food banks by next Christmas will be an important indicator about whether cost of living pressures are easing.
‘Betrayed’
Andrew Sinclair/BBC“This year is going to be a fight for survival. If I make it to Christmas I’ll be impressed” says Matthew Alum who runs two pubs in the Colchester area.
He has recently had to hand back a third pub to the brewery because he could no longer afford to it.
“I feel betrayed by the budget. We were promised loads of support, and all we had was another rise in the minimum wage and another rise in business rates.”
He says every time the minimum wage goes up it adds £100,000 to his wage bill. He has already had to increase prices and is now thinking about reducing staff hours to help.
The increase in employers’ national insurance contributions, the phasing out of business rate relief and a rates revaluation has also added to his costs.
“When Labour came to power I was paying £445 a month, now it could be as much as £3,200 a month” he says.
The industry body Hospitality UK estimates that the average business will see its rates rise by 94% over the next three years.
Chief Executive Allen Simpson says: “Every high street is going to feel a massive hit and so will our communities when much-loved venues are forced to close”
Back at the Cricketers pub in Fordham Heath, near Colchester, Mr Allum says the Government must rethink the rates revaluation and cut VAT for hospitality.
“If a Labour MP comes to talk to me about what’s going on, I’ll talk to them – howeve,r until they’re prepared to have a proper conversation with me about what needs to be done i’ll be asking them to leave.
“This isn’t party politics… for me this is betrayal.”
A Treasury spokesman said the budget contained a £4.3bn support package for hospitality.
“This comes on top of our efforts to help more venues offer pavement drinks and put on one-off events, maintaining our cut to alcohol duty on draught pints, and capping Corporation Tax,” he said.
The High Street has been struggling for years but there are many in the hospitality industry who wonder if this year will be make or break.
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Telecom operator Vodafone Idea on Friday laid out a detailed repayment roadmap for its adjusted gross revenue (AGR) liabilities; Know details
Vodafone Idea Share Price
Telecom operator Vodafone Idea on Friday laid out a detailed repayment roadmap for its adjusted gross revenue (AGR) liabilities, under which it will service a portion of the dues at a maximum of Rs 124 crore per year over a six-year period.
The company’s shares rose about 6% in early trade after the announcement.
In December, Reuters had reported that the Indian government approved a partial moratorium on Vodafone Idea’s dues, freezing payments of about $9.76 billion and pushing a large part of the repayment burden into the 2030s.
In its stock exchange filing, Vodafone Idea said its AGR liabilities — including principal, interest, penalty and interest on penalty for FY2006-07 to FY2018-19 — outstanding as of December 31, 2025, will be frozen and repaid in a phased manner.
As per the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) communication, the company will pay up to Rs 124 crore annually for six years from March 2026 to March 2031. This will be followed by payments of Rs 100 crore per year for four years from March 2032 to March 2035.
The balance AGR dues will then be cleared in equal annual instalments over six years from March 2036 to March 2041.
Vodafone Idea also said the DoT will constitute a committee to reassess the AGR dues, and the committee’s decision will be final. After the reassessment, the revised AGR amount will be repaid in equal annual instalments between March 2036 and March 2041.
The development is expected to remain in focus for investors, given Vodafone Idea’s stretched balance sheet and the critical role AGR relief plays in its long-term financial stability.
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January 09, 2026, 09:50 IST
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The rider chose to work mostly after ten at night. Rapido offers a 20% incentive for rides between ten pm and six am, making late-night slots more rewarding than daytime hours.
Over four days, he rode mainly at night, sometimes starting in the evening and continuing past midnight. Image: X
It began as a simple experiment. A Bengaluru resident, curious about the buzz around gig work, decided to spend a few late nights riding for Rapido to see if the money really matched the hype. He was not looking to switch careers or become a full-time rider. He just wanted to know whether a few spare hours after work could actually make a difference to his monthly finances.
Four days later, he had more than just an answer. He had numbers, experiences and a reality check that soon went viral on Reddit, sparking a wider conversation about part-time work in the city.
Why he chose Rapido and the night shift
The rider chose to work mostly after ten at night. The reason was practical. Rapido offers a twenty percent incentive for rides between ten pm and six am, making late-night slots more rewarding than daytime hours.
Another detail that caught attention was his claim that Rapido was not charging any commission on rides at the time. While he admitted he was unsure if this was permanent or linked to regulatory issues around bike taxis, the zero-commission factor clearly boosted his take-home earnings.
For him, the goal was simple. Test whether a few hours on the road could actually translate into meaningful extra income.
How the four days unfolded
Over four days, he rode mainly at night, sometimes starting in the evening and continuing past midnight.
On the first day, he worked from six thirty in the evening to nine at night and earned Rs 170. Later, between eleven at night and one thirty in the morning, he earned another Rs 460. His total for around five hours of riding came to Rs 630.
On the second day, he stayed online for about five hours and earned Rs 750.
On the third and fourth days, he rode for roughly three to four hours each night and earned Rs 420 on both days. He noted that these days were slightly slower, with fewer ride requests compared to the earlier shifts.
By the end of the fourth day, he had enough data to calculate what part-time riding really meant in practical terms.
The final numbers
Across four days, the rider clocked a total of seventeen working hours. His gross earnings stood at Rs 2220. From this, he deducted fuel expenses of around Rs 400. That left him with a net profit of Rs 1820 for the entire period.
In simple terms, he earned just over Rs 100 per hour after accounting for petrol. For some readers, that sounded modest. For others, especially those struggling with stagnant salaries and rising living costs, it felt like a useful safety net.
When the internet joined the debate
The Reddit post quickly filled with comments from people living similar double lives.
One user shared that he works in an IT firm from two in the afternoon to ten at night, earning Rs 24000 a month. After his shift, he rides for Rapido from ten pm to six am. According to him, the money he makes on the bike often matches or even beats what he earns at his desk job.
Stories like these pushed the conversation beyond one person’s experience. They raised bigger questions about whether flexible gig work is slowly becoming more attractive than low-paying formal jobs, especially for young workers.
Who this kind of work suits best
The Bengaluru rider ended his post with a grounded conclusion. Rapido and similar platforms may not be perfect, but they work well for students, people from economically weaker backgrounds and those who have free hours late at night.
Lower traffic, higher incentives and the freedom to log in and log out without long-term commitment make gig riding easier to fit around studies or a regular job.
At the same time, he did not romanticise it. Long hours, physical strain and rising fuel costs remain real challenges. This is not easy money. But for many, it is better than having no extra income at all.
A glimpse of Bengaluru’s changing workforce
This four-day experiment reflects a bigger shift in the city’s work culture.
Bengaluru is no longer a place where one job defines a person’s identity. Today, the same individual can be a software employee by day and a bike captain by night.
The story of this part-time Rapido rider is not just about earnings. It is about how people are stitching together livelihoods in a city where ambition often moves faster than paycheques.
And in those late-night rides through quieter streets and glowing phone screens, many are finding not just fares, but a new way to stay afloat.
January 09, 2026, 06:29 IST
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High street shops, pharmacies and music venues have called on Rachel Reeves to axe the looming increases to business rates for them as well as pubs.
The government is expected to announce a climbdown on the increases to business rates bills faced by pubs in England in the coming days.
Landlords and pub owners have been fiercely critical of the impending hikes, with more than 1,000 pubs banning Labour MPs from their premises.
But other lobby groups and backbench MPs have urged the government to widen the relief, saying many other kinds of businesses will not be able to pay the higher bills.
In her November Budget, the chancellor scaled back business rate discounts that have been in force since the pandemic from 75% to 40%, and announced that there would be no discount at all from April.
That, combined with big upward adjustments to rateable values of pub premises, left landlords facing the prospect of much higher bills.
The BBC understands the climbdown will apply only to pubs and not the whole hospitality sector.
The British Independent Retailers Association (Bira) questioned why its members -– which include high street shops, restaurants and cafes — would not be given the same relief.
Its chief executive Andrew Goodacre said independent retailers “face exactly the same challenges as pubs but have been left out of discussions about additional support”.
“Perhaps independent retailers need to follow the pubs’ example and start banning MPs from their premises too,” he said.
The British Retail Consortium (BRC) said the current business rates system “is not fit for purpose”.
Helen Dickinson, the BRC’s chief executive, said: “This latest announcement looks like another sticking plaster on a broken system rather than the more fundamental reform required.”
Jon Collins, chief executive of music venue body LIVE, said: “If the government is preparing a U-turn on business rates for pubs, it must not leave live events and arenas behind.”
The National Pharmacy Association chief executive Henry Gregg said the sector could face a 140% increase in rates, while the lobby group for gyms, pools and leisure centres said those businesses faced potential rate increases of 60%.
“Failure to provide a business rates support package to gyms, pools and leisure centres will lead to higher prices, reduced services, redundancies and in some cases the loss of gyms from our communities,” chief executive of ukactive Huw Edwards said.
Some of those lobby group concerns were echoed by MPs.
“Venues, clubs and cinemas up and down the country are already struggling for survival,” Conservative MP Dame Caroline Dinenage wrote to the chancellor on Thursday.
She said the planned rates reforms risk “pushing many over the edge”.
“The Treasury needs to be open about how it decided on the changes, while the sector desperately needs more details on the alternative support promised by the Prime Minister.”
Reeves said earlier this week that the government had reduced the rate of tax on pubs and hospitality, but the Independent Valuation Office increased what they saw as the value of those properties.
“Now we’re working with the sector to look at the implications of a range of policies and looking at planning and licensing,” she said in an interview with Good Morning Britain.
“I want to support our pubs; I want to support our high streets. That’s why we made the change to the rates. But I recognise that many paths are still struggling and we’re working with them.”
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