Helen Nugent

House prices moved up a gear in February, according to Nationwide, with property values increasing by 4.5 per cent in a year. The BBC reports on the building society's latest house price index which also reveals that property prices were up by 0.6 per cent compared with the previous month, bringing the cost of the average home to £205,846. Both the monthly and annual rise are greater than in January, but the Nationwide does not expect house prices to rocket. It is forecasting a 2 per cent rise in UK house prices over the course of 2017.

The Financial Ombudsman Service has revealed that unresolved grievances about the mis-selling of payment protection insurance (PPI) still dominate its workload. According to the BBC, the organisation received 150,000 new complaints in the six months to December 2016. Just over half of them - 78,000 - were about PPI policies. Chief ombudsman Caroline Wayman said: 'PPI complaints are down, but there are some suggestions that this could be the calm before the storm.' Meanwhile, the list of most-complained about businesses to the ombudsman is still dominated by the UK's high street banks, and a number of credit card lenders. Top of the list in the last half of 2016 was Bank of Scotland, part of the Lloyds banking group, with nearly 20,000 new complaints.

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The row over a sharp rise in business rates rumbles on - but now the government has bowed to sustained pressure and announced help for small firms. The Guardian reports that Philip Hammond will announce new measures in the budget on 8 March following comments by the communities secretary that more should be done 'to level the playing field'. At Prime Minister's questions yesterday, Theresa May said that small businesses left with the highest rate increases would be given help. Stamp duty The Times reports that 'sharp increases in the stamp duty on expensive homes are costing the Treasury as much as £500 million a year'. According to new analysis by Paul Nash, a partner at PwC, the tax take from homes worth more than £1.

Lloyds Banking Group has set aside a further £475 million for misconduct costs as the bank's statutory profits more than doubled to £4.2 billion. The Times reports on results that Lloyds called a 'good overall performance'. Its profits are the highest for a decade and shares in the bank rose by 4 per cent after the announcement. The bank, in which taxpayers own a stake of just under 5 per cent, also unveiled an 11 per cent rise in total dividends to £2.2 billion and the same percentage increase in staff bonuses to £393 million. Underlying profits fell from £8.1 billion to £7.9 billion.

There's some bad news for employees with generous company pensions following the publication of a government green paper on the future of Defined Benefit (DB) pensions. The Guardian reports that, under the proposals, firms could cut pension promises to 11 million people, dramatically reducing their income in retirement. The plans are likely to face fierce opposition from unions given they would permit companies to save £90 billion by providing annual increases in their retired employees’ pensions based on the consumer price index, rather than the retail price index. Analysis by Hargreaves Lansdown suggests that for every £1,000 in pension income in 1988, under RPI it had increased to £2,586 this year, but only £2,105 under CPI.

The prospect of swingeing cuts to public services edged closer today despite plans by nearly every local authority in England to raise council tax in 2017. The BBC reports that rises of up to 4.99 per cent are expected across the country. Nevertheless, libraries, bin collections and other services will still face funding problems. The Local Government Association says the cost of care for increasing numbers of elderly people is forcing up bills. But a spokesman for the Department for Communities and Local Government insisted that local authorities had been given a 'historic' four-year settlement.

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All eyes are on the latest inflation data, released this morning. According to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), inflation has reached its highest rate for two-and-a-half years. As measured by the Consumer Prices Index, annual inflation hit 1.8 per cent last month, up from 1.6 per cent in December. This is largely due to the rising cost of fuel, and is the fourth consecutive month that the rate has risen. Statistics from the RAC show that fuel prices peaked at a two-year high in early February. Dominic Baliszewski, director of consumer strategy for Momentum UK, said: 'A lot of people will be feeling the pinch, with disposable income taking a big hit.

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Rents have been in the news this week thanks to the Government's Housing White Paper. Now the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors says that rents will continue to rise with shortage of stock a key factor. ThisisMoney reports that rents will soar by 25 per cent over the next five years. Meanwhile, as far as house prices are concerned, chartered surveyors say they anticipate a rise of just under 20 per cent. A recent stamp duty increase for landlords and other tax changes have combined to make buy-to-lets as potential investments less attractive. According to the January 2017 RICS UK Residential Market Survey, 28 per cent more surveyors said they felt landlords are more likely to decrease rather than increase their portfolios over the next 12 months.

Fibs, white lies, alternative facts. We all bend the truth from time-to-time, although for most of us that doesn't include spouting nonsense from the podium of the White House press briefing room. When it comes to finance, we're not exactly a nation of truth-tellers. I can relay multiple stories of people who have concealed chronic conditions from travel insurers, long-term illnesses from company health plans and home repairs from household insurance firms. While keeping quiet may not always be a bad thing (I'm thinking of the time I neglected to tell my sister that her one-year-old daughter ate cat litter while under my care), failing to inform a financial services provider of a key fact is rarely advisable.

There was some surprising news over the weekend concerning the Government's policy on home-ownership. Ahead of the publication of a long-delayed white paper this week, Gavin Barwell, the housing minister, said the Government intended to encourage more housebuilding of all kinds, including more social housing. According to The Independent, this represents a 'major shift in housing policy by placing greater emphasis on renters with plans to deliver more affordable rental properties'. In today's Telegraph, house-building sources say they are worried at proposed Government plans to give developers a timetable to build homes, or risk losing their planning permission.