How will the Spring Budget affect first-time buyers?

After rumours around to potential changes to stamp duty and the possible launch of a 99% mortgage scheme, the Spring Budget is likely to help a small percentage of home-buyers.

Photo taken by Cat Lindsay

Even with the housing crisis and mortgages being one of the defining topics of recent years and a mortgage scheme reportedly considered.

It appears to have been removed with nothing in to take its place to help first-time buyers.

Kayleigh Lynch, mum of two and resident in Dorset said: “More help is definitely needed to help first-time buyers who have smaller deposits and struggling to be able to borrow enough to get on the ladder.

Photo taken by Cat Lindsay

Nationwide said in a press release on the 4th of March what they were hoping to see in the Spring Budget.

Their hope included the reintroduction of the Help to Buy ISA, which could increase the amount “saved per month from £200 to £500, reflective of higher house prices today.”

Henry Jordan, Nationwide’s Director of Home, said: “The government must make homeownership accessible for more people.”

Over £100,000 spent on hoax calls to the fire service in the last 5 years

24 hoax calls per month is what Dorset & Wiltshire Fire and Rescue Service (DWFRS) must deal with.

Chart created by Cat Lindsay, information sourced from FOI Request

February, the most expensive month of the year so far received 28 malicious calls.

Out of those calls 18 were attended to and 10 of them were determined not genuine by the control room.

Debbie Lowe, Information Governance Officer for DWFRS said: “Hoax calls do not delay getting help to genuine calls, all calls are treated as an emergency.”

Since 2018 the the approximate cost to the Service for the on-call appliances being sent to these incidents is £108,200.

Sarah Knell, watch manager in DWFRS control room, said: “The ultimate effect is that we are wasting money.”

She added: “If we were not spending money on hoax calls we could staff better or we could spend it on education or cadets.”

Sarah’s team work on an eight day shift pattern, two on, four off, two on, during this time period the team will receive three hoax calls on average.

Sarah said: “We got one call where people said they were stuck in swings and they’d even faked screaming down the phone, this was very stressful to deal with.”

She added: “We can sometimes determine hoax calls through how people speak to us over the phone, like when we ask for personal details like they get annoyed and swear at us down the phone.”

Sarah believes educating early is the best way to deal with hoax calls.

DWFRS go out to schools and talk about the wider implications of hoax calls.

As well as the consequences like certain phone numbers can get blocked so when there is a real emergency they cannot call.

Cigarette butts cost us £40 million a year

Cigarette butts costing our local authorities on average £40 million per year to clean up, according to a report from July 2023.

Cigarette butts make up nearly two-thirds of litter in Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole (BCP).

Litter Free Dorset launched a ‘Bin Your Butt’ campaign to encourage everyone to dispose of cigarettes responsibly.

BCP Councillor Andy Hadley, the portfolio holder for Climate Response, Environment and Energy, said: “I think we should ban smoking in public spaces.”

Mr Hadley said that over the last decade government have taken 40% of their budget.

Image sourced from Litter Free Dorset

If the council was not spending money on campaigns or cleaning up cigarette butts, they could reallocate this money to other services.

Danielle Rochford, mum of two living in Bournemouth, said: “I would like to see this money spent on repairing play areas to make them more enjoyable and safer for children.”

Keep Britain Tidy’s website states that “most smokers” often believe that cigarette butts are biodegradable.

The organisation’s research shows that each butt can take 14 years to breakdown, seeping toxic chemicals including arsenic, lead, nicotine and leaving behind microplastics.

The chemicals that are leached harm entire ecosystems, just one cigarette butt can contaminate 100 litres of water.

Photo taken by Cat Lindsay

Mr. Hadley “Our beaches are just filled with litter. I would like to campaign for more people to be responsible for their products and the supplier should take more responsibility for their waste part of the product.”

Statistics show a consistent decrease in smoking over the past 11 years, in 2011 20.2% of the population smoked, this dropped down to 12.9% in 2022.

Photo taken by Cat Lindsay

Rishi Sunak announced at the Conservative Party conference that the legal age of smoking would be raised every year.

Bianca Boiciuc, 19, a fast-food employee in Poole has smoked for two years as a result of stress and peer influence.

Bianca said: “I think he should take into consideration what makes people smoke cigarettes, it's never going to become obsolete until he gets to the root cause of the stressors people face to cause them to smoke, like with drug use, people still consume drugs, just in hidden areas, it's not obsolete.”