British business confidence hit highs not seen since April 2017 on hopes the economy is recovering strongly to pre-pandemic levels, according to a survey.

Employers in England’s North West and East registered the biggest jump in confidence, the latest Lloyds Bank Business Barometer found.

There was caution among companies about inflation and staff shortages.

But firms in manufacturing, services and construction all posted greater optimism that recovery would continue.

The monthly survey of 1,200 firms, conducted between 2 and 16 August, also saw business confidence in Northern Ireland turn positive after a negative response in July’s poll.

The barometer found that overall business confidence among UK firms rose by six points to +36% in August, driven by improvements in companies’ trading prospects and expectations of stronger growth in the year ahead.

Said Hann-Ju Ho, senior economist at Lloyds Bank Commercial Banking, said: “Business confidence reaching its highest level in over four years tells a positive story about the country’s economic recovery.

“This confidence is driven by the continued success of the vaccine rollout, the removal of lockdown restrictions and adjustments to self-isolation rules.

“Staff shortages remain a challenge, but as the economy moves back towards pre-pandemic levels we can be optimistic that the momentum for business confidence and economic optimism can be sustained in the months ahead.”

Regional breakdown
Confidence increased in nine out of the 12 UK regions and nations in August with particularly strong rises in the North West, up 26 points to 64% and the East of England, showing a rise of 14 points to 39%.

Smaller rises were seen in the North East, up 6 points to 46% and London, up 4 points to 41%. For the North West, East of England and North East, confidence was at its highest since the survey sample was expanded in 2018.

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Increases in confidence were also recorded for Scotland (34%), the South East (32%), the South West (37%) and Wales (19%). In Northern Ireland, confidence rose significantly to 18% (from 6% in July), but it remains the region of the UK with the lowest level of confidence.

The remaining three regions saw slight confidence declines, with the West Midlands at 27%, Yorkshire & the Humber at 26%, while there was a larger 10-point fall in the East Midlands to 28%.

The improved mood echoes recent official statistics. Earlier this month, jobs data from the Office for National Statistics suggested that the labour market continues to “rebound robustly”.

Government borrowing has also fallen as furlough support ends and tax receipts rise.

But like other survey data, the Lloyds barometer suggested that inflation – which saw a surprise slowdown in the year to July, down to 2% from 2.5% in June – remains a worry.

“It is clear there is still some level of uncertainty on inflation and the impact of price pressures,” said Gareth Oakley, managing director for business banking at Lloyds. “The last few months of the year will be pivotal to the future of UK economic growth.”

A new law aimed at making school uniforms cheaper in England and Wales will not be in place in time for the start of this school year.

Headteachers are waiting for the new statutory guidance on uniforms, which will make schools place affordability at the centre of their uniform policy.

The government says schools should expect full details in the autumn.

But that means parents will not benefit from the changes as schools go back this September.

According to The Children’s Society, the average uniform costs £315 per primary school pupil and £337 per secondary pupil.

Mike Amesbury, the Labour MP who first introduced the legislation, said he would be “incredibly disappointed” if any further delays to the guidance meant that the changes weren’t fully in force for the start of the next academic year, beginning in September 2022.

He added that hundreds of thousands of children, parents and campaigners would be equally upset.

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It is expected that the rules will limit the number of logos on uniforms, allowing parents to buy more items from supermarkets and shops other than a school’s main supplier.

When this new law eventually comes into force, it will save families a big sum of cash.

At the moment, some schools require trousers or skirts to have the school badge on, alongside jumpers, cardigans, polo shirts, blazers – and that’s before you even get started on sports kits.

Each item that’s specific to the school costs more, so only having to buy one or two would mean big savings.

In the meantime some local sewing services have pattern school logos and might be able to embroider a badge onto a generic top to save some cash.

For years many, schools have had a link to a local uniform shop, where all pupils must go to get kitted out. Although many parents see this as a way of supporting local business, for plenty of other families it just limits their chances of getting something cheaper elsewhere. This new law is aiming to open up the way those deals with supply shops are signed, so it’s not done on a nod-and-a-wink, and will now have price as the central factor.

Parents will now have to wait and hope that the law is finalised before the next academic year begins to see the reality of those cash savings.

2px presentational grey line
Schools are also expecting a new tendering process, which will mean they can get the best value for money when selecting who makes and sells their uniforms.

Additionally there’s expected to be a process for parents and carers to complain if they feel that’s not happening effectively at their children’s schools.

While they wait for legislation to cut costs, many parents have taken matters into their own hands by forming groups and swap shops, often online, to offer others items that no longer fit and to find new kit for their own children.

Emma Ball started the Uniform Exchange in Winsford, Cheshire three years ago when her two eldest children left school and she was left with clothes she no longer had use for.

She now collects items from parents across the area and helps get them to families who need anything from a new blazer for high school to a pinafore for winter term.

Since starting the exchange she has helped more than 1,000 families and said that this year demand has doubled.

Emma says the issue of incorrect uniforms affects secondary school pupils in particular, with some schools sanctioning them or even sending them home if they arrive without wearing the right clothes.

“Children shouldn’t ever be punished for not having a school uniform” she said, adding that people shouldn’t worry about going to a swap shop for school wear as they’re keeping it out of landfill.

Parents Corinna Baker-Sinclair and Rebecca Benson have both used the swap shop in the town.

With three children in primary and another in secondary, Corinna said she would have to pay out well over £1,000 if she were to buy everything new each year.

For Rebecca it’s not just the financial cost of new uniforms that led her to use the uniform exchange. “When you look around and see how much there actually is that can be put to good use rather than going to landfill it makes sense to reuse,” she said. “You’d much rather spend that money making memories than just to buy a school uniform.”

When the law requiring government to introduce the new guidelines came into force earlier this year, school standards minister Nick Gibb said they would help families to save money and ensure that cost was never a barrier to accessing the best possible education.

However, with the new term starting imminently for most pupils in England and Wales, it’s likely to be a year at least before parents see any change in the amount they’re spending to kit out their children for school.

Apple app developers will soon be able to email customers and tell them how to avoid Apple’s payment systems.

The current rules ban app makers from mentioning that there are ways to pay that avoid Apple’s 30% cut, even through e-mail outside the store.

But as part of a $100m (£73m) legal settlement with developers, the tech giant is changing its policy.

Apple said the change was a “clarification” and part of its “efforts to evolve the App Store”.

The terms are still subject to judicial approval. Once active, developers will be able to use email addresses gathered from their App Store customers to email them about ways to pay outside of Apple’s system.

Apple said users must consent to such emails and have the right to opt out.

$100m fund
The row between Apple and some of its developers over its 30% cut has been rumbling on for years.

Apple has already made concessions – for example, dropping the cut to 15% for businesses who earn under $1m, or for recurring subscriptions after the first year.

It is a core part of the Apple-Epic legal battle, which started when the Fortnite maker put its own payment option into its game – at a lower price – and was swiftly banned from the Apple and Google app stores.

But this new change is limited in scope, and does not allow alternative payment options inside apps the way Epic implemented it before its ban.Developers still cannot add their own payment system directly into apps or use in-app notifications to tell people about other ways to pay.

And Apple’s other rules – including what kinds of apps can use external systems – remain largely the same.

The settlement of the class action lawsuit brought against Apple also involves a payout for eligible developers of anywhere from $250 to $30,000 each from the $100m fund, depending on how many apply and their history of working in the App Store.

Apple has also pledged to introduce more price points for developers to choose from, giving app makers many more options than they had before, and to publish an annual transparency report with details about App Store approvals, app removals, and more.

‘A big deal’
The settlement also includes a commitment to maintain some existing developer-friendly policies for at least a few years.

Richard Czeslawski, one of the app developers named in the case, said the ability to use customer information to tell them about their options was “a big deal”.

In a filing with the court, he said it was a “game changer” because the ability to communicate effectively with his customers was the lifeblood of his business.

Developers will “take full advantage of this change… as a way to further reduce the commissions paid to Apple”, he said.

The Coalition for App Fairness – a cohort of developers set up to campaign against some of Apple’s policies, including household names such as Epic Games and Spotify – said it was a “sham settlement offer”.

It labelled the deal as “nothing more than a desperate attempt to avoid the judgement of courts, regulators, and legislators worldwide” and argued it does nothing to address underlying issues.

“App makers will still be barred from communicating about lower prices or offering competing payment options within their apps. We will not be appeased by empty gestures,” it said.

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Apple said it “appreciates the developer feedback and ideas that helped inform the agreement”.

“The updates constitute the latest chapter of Apple’s longstanding efforts to evolve the App Store into an even better market place for users and developers alike,” it said.

Separately, Apple also announced its “news partner programme” – a change to its agreements with news publishers who contribute to its Apple News product.

Those publishers will only be charged a 15% commission fee on “qualifying subscriptions” for their news app from day one, avoiding the full 30% fee entirely.

A 12-year-old boy from London has made about £290,000 during the school holidays, after creating a series of pixelated artworks called Weird Whales and selling non-fungible tokens (NFTs).

With NFTs, artwork can be “tokenised” to create a digital certificate of ownership that can be bought and sold.

They do not generally give the buyer the actual artwork or its copyright.

Benyamin Ahmed is keeping his earnings in the form of Ethereum – the crypto-currency in which they were sold.

This means they could go up or down in value and there is no back-up from the authorities if the digital wallet in which he is holding them is hacked or compromised.

He has never had a traditional bank account.

Extremely proud
Benyamin’s classmates are as yet unaware of his new-found crypto-wealth, although he has made YouTube videos about his hobby, which he enjoys alongside swimming, badminton and taekwondo.

“My advice to other children that maybe want to get into this space is don’t force yourself to do coding, maybe because you get peer pressured – just as if you like cooking, do cooking, if you like dancing, do dances, just do it to the best of your ability,” he said.

Benyamin’s father, Imran, a software developer who works in traditional finance, encouraged Benyamin and his brother, Yousef, to start coding at the ages of five and six.

The children have had the advantage of a strong network of technology experts to call on for advice and help – but he is extremely proud of them.

More serious
“It was a little bit of a fun exercise – but I picked up on really early that they were really receptive to it and they were really good,” Imran said.

“So then we started getting a little bit more serious – and now it’s every single day… but you can’t cram this stuff, you can’t say I’m going to learn coding in three months.”

The boys did 20 or 30 minutes of coding exercises a day – including on holiday, he said.

Weird Whales is Benyamin’s second digital-art collection, following an earlier Minecraft-inspired set that sold less well.

This time, he drew inspiration from a well known pixelated whale meme image and a popular digital-art style but used his own program to create the set of 3,350 emoji-type whales.

“It was interesting to see all of them hatch, as they appeared on my screen slowly generating,” he said.

Benyamin is already working on his third, superhero-themed collection.

He would also like to make an “underwater game” featuring the whales.

“That would be amazing,” he said.

Imran is “100% certain” his son has not broken copyright law and has engaged lawyers to “audit” his work, as well as getting advice on how to trademark his own designs.

The art world is divided over the current trend for NFTs.

Artists say they are a useful additional line of revenue.

And there are many stories of eye-wateringly high sales.

A 12-year-old boy from London has made about £290,000 during the school holidays, after creating a series of pixelated artworks called Weird Whales and selling non-fungible tokens (NFTs).

With NFTs, artwork can be “tokenised” to create a digital certificate of ownership that can be bought and sold.

They do not generally give the buyer the actual artwork or its copyright.

Benyamin Ahmed is keeping his earnings in the form of Ethereum – the crypto-currency in which they were sold.

This means they could go up or down in value and there is no back-up from the authorities if the digital wallet in which he is holding them is hacked or compromised.

He has never had a traditional bank account.

Extremely proud
Benyamin’s classmates are as yet unaware of his new-found crypto-wealth, although he has made YouTube videos about his hobby, which he enjoys alongside swimming, badminton and taekwondo.

“My advice to other children that maybe want to get into this space is don’t force yourself to do coding, maybe because you get peer pressured – just as if you like cooking, do cooking, if you like dancing, do dances, just do it to the best of your ability,” he said.

Benyamin’s father, Imran, a software developer who works in traditional finance, encouraged Benyamin and his brother, Yousef, to start coding at the ages of five and six.

The children have had the advantage of a strong network of technology experts to call on for advice and help – but he is extremely proud of them.

More serious
“It was a little bit of a fun exercise – but I picked up on really early that they were really receptive to it and they were really good,” Imran said.

“So then we started getting a little bit more serious – and now it’s every single day… but you can’t cram this stuff, you can’t say I’m going to learn coding in three months.”

The boys did 20 or 30 minutes of coding exercises a day – including on holiday, he said.

Weird Whales is Benyamin’s second digital-art collection, following an earlier Minecraft-inspired set that sold less well.

This time, he drew inspiration from a well known pixelated whale meme image and a popular digital-art style but used his own program to create the set of 3,350 emoji-type whales.

“It was interesting to see all of them hatch, as they appeared on my screen slowly generating,” he said.

Benyamin is already working on his third, superhero-themed collection.

He would also like to make an “underwater game” featuring the whales.

“That would be amazing,” he said.

Imran is “100% certain” his son has not broken copyright law and has engaged lawyers to “audit” his work, as well as getting advice on how to trademark his own designs.

The art world is divided over the current trend for NFTs.

Artists say they are a useful additional line of revenue.

And there are many stories of eye-wateringly high sales.

But there is also scepticism over whether they are a realistic long-term investment.

And former Christie’s auctioneer Charles Allsopp BBC News buying them made “no sense”.

“The idea of buying something which isn’t there is just strange,” he said earlier this year.

“People who invest in it are slight mugs – but I hope they don’t lose their money.”

But there is also scepticism over whether they are a realistic long-term investment.

And former Christie’s auctioneer Charles Allsopp BBC News buying them made “no sense”.

“The idea of buying something which isn’t there is just strange,” he said earlier this year.

“People who invest in it are slight mugs – but I hope they don’t lose their money.”

Zoom has announced that it will adopt a hybrid approach as it prepares for a return to office working.

It said an internal survey of employees found only 1% wanted to return to the office full-time.

The pandemic spurred huge growth for the video calls platform, with sales in the last three months of 2020 up 370% compared with the same period in 2019.

The company said it would strategically mix remote and in-office working, but admitted that it was “not easy”.

Zoom’s employee poll found that more than half of its staff preferred a hybrid approach, with the remainder favouring or already working fully remotely.

Writing on a company blog, chief financial officer Kelly Steckelberg said it was “still experimenting with how that even looks”.

“We opened our Sydney, Australia, office this summer, but temporarily closed it soon after, as Covid-19 threatened the area. We plan to reopen again when it is safe, but this could impact plans to reopen a second location this fall [autumn],” she wrote.

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The firm said it would not rush office reopenings and that no office would open until it was “possible to do so without personal protective equipment and social distancing”.

Some other tech firms are also being cautious.

Recently, Apple delayed recalling staff to the office until January at the earliest amid fears over surging Covid cases.