Ahead of the budget later this month, we’d like to hear from people in the UK about what measures they feel might help – or not help – financially

We want to find out more about any financial concerns people in the UK have ahead of the budget on 28 October 2026. What measures would you like to see in the budget and what issues would you like to see addressed?

For instance, do you have particular concerns around energy bills, petrol, childcare, fiscal drag, pensions – or something else? Let us know below.

Exclusive: Chancellor urged to reverse Jeremy Hunt’s tax surcharge cuts to claw back billions in lost revenue

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Tax cuts for big banks have deprived the UK government of £6bn in revenues, according to campaigners, who are calling on the chancellor, John Healey, to increase taxes and force lenders to pay their “fair share” in the budget.

Calculations by the Trades Union Congress (TUC), which represents unions with more than 5.3 million members across England and Wales, shows that the public purse is billions of pounds worse off as a result of tax cuts introduced under the Tory chancellor Jeremy Hunt in 2023.

From a flat in a new urban village in London to a family-sized home in a rural village in Norfolk

Thinking Allowed, The Artificial Human and Free Thinking among other programmes hit by £500m cuts

BBC Radio 4’s consumer rights show You and Yours is to be axed after more than 50 years, becoming one of the latest victims of the corporation’s £500m cuts plan.

The programme, once described by the former Radio 4 controller Mark Damazer as “one of the most important” on the station, is one of a handful to be cut as the BBC searches for shows that can be more easily adapted as podcasts.

Move expected to make pump pricing more transparent and encourage competition after diesel hits record £2 a litre

Drivers will be able to see live petrol prices on Google Maps for the first time from Thursday, in a move that will help motorists shop around for the cheapest fuel.

Millions of motorists will be able to find the cheapest petrol and diesel prices by searching for a local forecourt in the Google app, in what could prove to be “a major development” in making fuel prices more fair, according to campaigners.

Readers respond to an article in which Larry Elliott argues that Andy Burnham must challenge neoliberal nostrums

Larry Elliott’s column on the rightwing economic myths constraining Andy Burnham’s government should be required reading before John Healey’s budget (Rightwing economic myths could derail Burnham’s project – to destroy them, look to Keynes, 1 October).

I spent 20 years trading bonds, and agree that the household budget analogy bears no relation to how the UK state finances itself. Parliament votes on the spending, the Treasury instructs the Bank of England, and the Bank credits accounts in the private sector. Taxes withdraw money afterwards.

Average cost of home in September was £298,441, says Lloyds – about the same as year earlier and in August

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UK house prices flatlined in September, according to a leading index, as rising mortgage costs started to weigh on the market.

The average cost of a home was £298,441, roughly the same as it was a year earlier and in the previous month, according to the tracker from Lloyds previously known as the Halifax HPI.

If recent complaints are believed, London and the UK are no longer welcoming for ultra-high net worth individuals

London was once globally renowned as the “billionaires’ playground”, where the world’s super-rich could relax in the Georgian townhouses of Mayfair undisturbed by the grasping hand of the state.

But if recent complaints by fleeing ultra-high net worth individuals are to be believed, the city is no longer as welcoming for those who consider themselves to be Britain’s most-persecuted minority.

We would like to speak to people about their experience of using AI agents when dealing with their finances

Following the release of Meta’s Muse and Open AI’s dots there’s now capacity for these AI agents to assist with some financial transactions on a user’s behalf.

With this in mind, we would like to speak to people who use AI agents to manage their finances.

Industry leaders say bogus claims rose 14% last year, pushing up premiums for all customers

An insurance fraudster who pocketed more than £14,000 for the supposed theft of Lego sets, fishing gear and gaming consoles was behind one of last year’s most high-profile bogus claims.

Investigators uncovered £1.34bn of fraud in 2025, a 14% increase on the year before, according to the Association of British Insurers (ABI).

Sykes Holiday Cottages showed no empathy and insisted on paperwork we didn’t have so soon after my husband’s death

We booked a break with Sykes Holiday Cottages for 11 of us to celebrate my mum’s 80th birthday last February. The cost was £2,400, paid for by my 87-year-old dad, but it was my husband who made the booking.

In January, my husband was diagnosed with aggressive lymphoma, and he died 10 days before the trip. My parents and some other members of the party still planned to take the holiday, and my dad informed Sykes of the death, since my husband was their point of contact.

Scammers reuse personal details harvested from fake Esta websites – and texts and calls can keep arriving for months

When the British actor Lisa Riley was preparing to travel to the US last year, she applied online for an Esta so she would not need a visa. After finding the site through a Google search she filled in her passport, bank and personal details and waited for the confirmation, which normally takes just under an hour.

When it failed to arrive, she emailed an address from the site where she had paid and got back a message unlike any she had seen before, with a link to a website that displayed a jumble of words and letters.

Are you making cutbacks in light of the price increases?

The average price of diesel in the UK climbed to a record £2 a litre on 2 October.

The price of a litre at UK forecourts has risen 40.5% since late February, when the US-Israel war on Iran began disrupting supplies of crude and refined oil products from the Gulf, leading to cost increases across the economy.

From a neo-baronial country house with turrets in acres of grounds in Scotland to a modernist tower block in a bustling part of London

The Naylors’ four-bedroom home in Milton Keynes acts like a mini-power station after retrofitting solar panels, a battery and a heat pump

Clare Naylor paid close attention to how much energy she and her family were using last winter, filling hot-water bottles and bringing out extra blankets to ensure they didn’t go over budget. This year, she won’t have to worry as she is guaranteed not to receive a bill.

While millions of British households face the highest energy charges in three years from this week after a 4% rise in the price cap, and predictions of a 16% increase in January, upgrades to Naylor’s home mean she will not have to pay a thing.