1,000 job proposal for waste ground

Plans to transform a patch of waste ground into a business park with the potential to accommodate 1,000 jobs look set to be approved. Planning officers at Darlington Borough Council have recommended that the proposal for the former Torrington site is given permission.The Crucial Day I predicted yesterday certainly came to pass. Added to all the other events, I did not predict President Trump banning travel to the US for those non US citizens that had travelled to the EU in the last 14 days. We await COBRA this morning to see what the UK going into the ‘Delay Phase’ actually means for us in the UK.Rishi Sunak’s Budget seemed pretty sensible in the circumstances. I will leave to my colleagues to review the bigger picture. But I have written often about Entrepreneur’s Relief and, indeed, have had one of my largest ‘email bags’ on the subject in recent weeks.In the end, Sunak reduced the lifetime relief from £10m to £1m. That was pretty much in line with my recommendations – although I would have been a bit more generous and reduced it to £2m. I think that is fair and will still mean that 85% of claims will still qualify. Entrepreneur’s Relief was well intentioned when first introduced but got highjacked by Private Equity and others who abused it. It is a shame that ‘real’ entrepreneurs had to suffer as a consequence.However, remember that at the time it was introduced CGT = your highest rate of income tax (at that time 40%) CGT stays at 20%. So even those making a gain of £10m would only pay tax of £1.9m – retaining £8.1m nett. Also, in most sales, many employees have smaller stakes that also qualify for Entrepreneurs Relief. The 10% relief will still apply to most of them.I don’t know a single person (including Anthony & I) who started a business because of Entrepreneur’s Relief. SEIS and EIS are much more important and these incentives are unaltered. The application by West Yorkshire-based Commercial Development Projects Limited is for a mixed-use development comprising of industrial units, storage and warehouse units, a public house and a 60-bed hotel. Similar developments at the site have been refused planning permission because the council has wanted to earmark it for a prestige development.