Yodel Suspends Collections Hitting Deliveries

MPs Summon City Watchdog Bosses Over Probe

Written By Unknown on Minggu, 14 Desember 2014 | 00.02

Two City watchdog executives criticised following a probe into the insurance industry are to give evidence on the crisis to a powerful panel of MPs, it has been confirmed.

Clive Adamson, the Financial Conduct Authority's (FCA) director of supervision, and Zitah McMillan, its communications chief, will appear before the Treasury Select Committee next Tuesday, 16 December, as reported by Sky's City Editor Mark Kleinman.

A further session with Martin Wheatley, the FCA's chief executive, is expected to be held in the new year.

It follows a critical report over the bungled handling of an FCA investigation, which saw share prices tumble.

It centred on an interview given to a national newspaper on the regulator's probe into 30 million financial policies sold between the 1970s and the turn of the millennium.

An independent inquiry by Simon Davis, a leading City lawyer, said the FCA's approach was "high risk, poorly supervised and inadequately controlled".

The £3.8m report revealed errors in the way the interview was handled and delays in a response when it became clear that it was sending insurance company shares into free-fall.

Mr Adamson, Mr Wheatley and Ms McMillan were all criticised in Mr Davis' report, alongside David Lawton, the FCA director of markets.

All four were stripped of their bonuses.

The FCA has also announced Mr Adamson and Ms McMillan are leaving, but insist it is unconnected to the inquiry.

FCA chairman John Griffith-Jones said of Mr Davis' report: "We apologise for the mistakes that were made and the shortcomings in systems and controls which his report has revealed.

"I am determined the FCA will learn the lessons and will do our utmost to ensure that a situation like this will never happen again."

Andrew Tyrie, the chairman of the Treasury Select Committee, said on Wednesday the report's findings illustrated a regulator "pursuing the wrong strategy in the wrong way".

He accused the FCA of falling "well below the standards it requires of the firms it regulates" and said further investigation was required.

Mr Tyrie said: "The Committee will, among many other things, examine whether these errors were a one-off or whether they reveal something amiss, perhaps seriously amiss, with the standards and culture of the FCA.

"We will also examine remedies, both those proposed or already announced, and others."

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Treasury To Unveil 'Landmark' Bank Agreement

By Mark Kleinman, City Editor

Ministers will next week hail a "landmark" deal with Britain's nine biggest lenders to offer millions of consumers a new fee-free basic bank account.

Sky News has learnt that the Treasury will announce on Monday that the banks will establish accounts which end charges - whcih can be as high as £35 per item - for failed direct debit or standing order payments.

The new product will be provided by institutions which between them have more than 90% of the current account market, and will be available to people who are not eligible for a bank's standard current account and either have no bank account, or cannot use their existing accounts because of financial problems.

The participating lenders - which have agreed to launch the accounts by the end of next year - are Barclays, the Co-operative Bank, HSBC, Lloyds Banking Group, National Australia Bank (which owns the Clydesdale and Yorkshire), Nationwide, Royal Bank of Scotland, Santander UK and TSB.

Andrea Leadsom, the economic secretary to the Treasury, is expected to hail the development as a "landmark" agreement, saying that it should bring to an end the problem of consumers being locked out of their accounts when payments fail.

Sky News had previously revealed that some banks had expressed concerns during negotiations with the Government about the terms of the deal.

The provision of basic bank accounts, of which there are estimated to be more than 9m in the UK, is estimated to cost the industry more than £300m annually, with the new accounts likely to add substantially to that bill.

Earlier this year, a European Union Directive ordered member states to supervise the introduction of basic accounts which must charge fees described as "fair".

Ministers are understood to be pleased that they have secured an agreement to launch accounts with no fees, with customers offered services on the same terms as other personal current accounts provided by each participating lender.

This will involve customers having access to all standard over-the-counter services in bank and Post Office branches, as well as access to the entire national ATM network.

Some bank executives have warned that the structure agreed with the Treasury will mean that the new accounts are ultimately subsidised by consumers elsewhere in the banking system.

A further concern was raised that the new account could attract demand from large numbers of consumers who are not benefit claimants, but this is likely to have been alleviated by the eligibility restrictions agreed between the lenders and the Treasury.

The Government estimates that up to 7m people will participate in the Universal Credit welfare programme by 2019, with the new basic account expected to be restricted to that population.

The British Bankers' Association (BBA) has been leading the negotiations with the Treasury about the framework of the plans.

Neither the BBA nor the Treasury would comment on Friday.

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UK Flights Chaos After Traffic Control Glitch

More than 100 flights have been cancelled and many others delayed after a major computer failure grounded planes in London and the South.

A glitch at the state-of-the-art UK air traffic control centre headquarters in Swanwick, Hampshire, caused severe disruption.

For a time no aircraft were able to take off at some of the UK's major airports. Some flights were allowed to land.

Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin said the disruption was "simply unacceptable" and revealed the Government had asked NATS for a full explanation.

It was reported airspace over London had been closed but air traffic control company NATS denied this, saying airspace capacity was "restricted in order to manage the situation".

NATS later said the system had been restored and it was in the process of returning services to normal.

The glitch lasted from 3.27pm to 4.03pm and Sky sources said a flight planning server had failed.

Airports affected by the disruption included Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted and London City.

Aberdeen and Edinburgh were also hit by the computer problem. Other airports that reported delays included Birmingham, Manchester, Luton and Bristol.

Heathrow said at least 75 flights have been cancelled and up to 400 delayed.

It said the problem was likely to have a knock-on effect for flights on Saturday because aircraft and crew will not be in the correct positions.

Gatwick saw 15 cancellations and London City between 10 and 15.

British Airways said: "We are working hard to look after our customers who have been affected by the air traffic control failure experienced by all airlines at Heathrow, Gatwick and London City airports.

"We anticipate disruption to both departing and arriving aircraft but will do all we can to minimise any impact."

Speaking to Sky News, NATS managing director of operations Martin Rolfe defended his organisation's handling of the chaos.

"It was a technical failure at our Swanwick centre which handles 6,500 flights a day," he said.

"We went through our backup systems and restored things relatively quickly but not without delays to passengers, which we hugely regret.

"These things are relatively rare. We are a very busy island for air traffic control, so we're always going to be operating near capacity.

"What we've seen today is a very quick response. We didn't close any airports, we didn't close any airspace. We reduced the flow to make sure everything could be handled safely."

East Midlands and Birmingham airports said they were virtually unaffected.

One passenger caught up in the travel chaos was Matt Warren. He tweeted: "Stuck on the tarmac at Heathrow airport. Air traffic control failures. No flights in or out."

David Fitzgerald, who was stuck in a plane on the tarmac at Gatwick, should have been going to Dublin for a 3pm departure.

"We were boarding but then we were told the news there was a major failure at air-traffic control," he said.

"The good news is that some aircraft are being allowed to leave using a lower flight level - it's only the higher flight level that's affected."

Nick Adderley, a police chief superintendent, was also stuck on the tarmac at Gatwick after trying to fly home to Manchester.

He told Sky News: "This is a business flight for me… [I am] trying to get home after a business meeting in London.

"There are a number of people on board trying to get connecting flights to go on holiday. The spirits are pretty high. The mood is pretty good at the moment."

The centre at Swanwick has been subject to a number of computer glitches since NATS moved there from its old headquarters in West Drayton in west London in the early part of the last decade.

One of the worst problems was a year ago - on Saturday 7 December 2013 - when thousands of passengers were left stranded when hundreds of flights were grounded following a technical fault at the Hampshire centre.

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Water Bills To Fall By Â£20 Over Next 5 Years

Household water bills should fall by around £20 over the next five years, the industry watchdog has ruled.

The 5% real-terms drop, excluding inflation, would see average bills come down from £396 to £376 by the end of the decade, according to Ofwat.

The pricing decision by the regulator confirms a provisional decision in August.

When the process for setting bills began last year, water companies had submitted plans which would on average have cut bills by 2% in real terms.

Ofwat rejected a request by the UK's biggest water company, Thames Water, to increase household charges by 3% over the period 2015-20 to help pay for the £4.2bn super-sewer project.

The firm, which serves around 14 million customers in and around London, has been told it must instead cut them by 5%.

It also said utility firms must improve efforts to tackle water leakage, supply interruptions, sewerage water flooding of properties and see cleaner water at beaches.

Ofwat chief executive Cathryn Ross said: "With bills held down by 5% and service driven up over the next five years, customers will get more and pay less.

"Where companies stepped up to do the best they could for their customers we did not need to intervene, but where companies fell short we stepped in to make sure customers get a good deal.

"Now the hard work begins. Companies will only build trust and confidence with their customers if they deliver.

"Those who do can look forward to fair returns, while those that don't will be hit in the pocket and face a tough five years ahead."

All 18 companies were told to cut bills in real terms, 10 of which which supply both water and sewerage services.

United, which had asked last December to keep bills flat in real terms, was told to cut them by 3%.

Bristol Water - which is a water supplier only - had asked to put bills up by 1% but was instead told to cut them by 21%.

Anglian was told to cut bills by 10%, Welsh Water Dwr Cymru by 5%, Northumbrian (including Essex and Suffolk) by 1%, Severn Trent by 5%, Southern by 8%, South West by 7%, Wessex by 9% and Yorkshire by 3%.

New charges will come into effect in April 2015.

Ofwat said companies have two months in which to accept its final determination or seek a referral to the Competition and Markets Authority.

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Energy Firms Fined For Missing Green Targets

The energy regulator says it has secured £4.6m in fines from three power suppliers for failing to meet obligations to low-income households.

Ofgem said Scottish Power would pay £2.4m for missing targets under the Government's Community Energy Saving Programme while SSE would pay £1.75m and GDF Suez £450,000.

The programme was set up by the Government to help people living in low-income areas with loft and wall insulation and new boilers.

The regulator said the failure by the companies to meet the targets meant thousands of households faced higher heating bills as they "missed out on measures like insulation during the early months of 2013, where consumers experienced a particularly cold winter".

It said the companies would have received larger fines if they had not taken steps to make up their shortfalls.

Referring to the fine for SSE, Ofgem's senior partner in charge of enforcement, Sarah Harrison, said: "Our action today is a clear signal that failure to deliver environmental obligations on time is not acceptable."

However, the fines are smaller than the £28m penalty for North Yorkshire-based Drax and £11.1m fine for British Gas handed down for similar failings earlier in the year.

Ofgem said the money will go to charities and funds that benefit vulnerable customers.

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US Shutdown Averted With $1.1tn Budget Deal

The US House of Representatives has passed a $1.1tn (£700bn) budget bill, averting a government shutdown with just hours to spare.

The Republican bill was passed by 219 votes to 206, after the White House urged Democrats to back it.

The legislation will fund most of the government until the end of September 2015, although some departments will only receive short-term funding.

Homeland Security is one of those - giving Republicans an opportunity to try to block President Obama's immigration reforms in two months' time.

The President faced a revolt from dozens of Democrats over a clause which rolls back key financial regulations on Wall Street.

Among them was the House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, who described the pro-banking measures as "blackmail".

Democrats fear it could lead to a repeat of the conditions which contributed to the financial crisis seven years ago.

Although the House Speaker, Republican John Boehner, had been confident before the vote, he too struggled to secure enough votes.

On Thursday he was forced to delay proceedings in the House to shore up support for the bill.

The legislation still needs to be passed by the Senate before it can be signed into law.

A government shutdown in October 2013 saw hundreds of thousands of federal employees sent home and many services, national parks and tourist sites closed for as much as two weeks.

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Prices At The Pump To Hit Four-Year Low

Petrol prices are set to fall to a four-year low as a leading supermarket prepares to shave another 2p off a litre.

Asda said it will bring its price for unleaded down to 112.7p a litre on Saturday, which will mean it is at its cheapest since October 2010 and down 14p since September this year.

It will also be reducing the cost of diesel by 1p to 118.7p a litre.

The move comes after other supermarkets introduced a number of fuel reductions over the last few weeks amid falling oil prices.

Crude oil is trading at around $63 a barrel - a fall of 40% since June - as increased US shale production and a refusal by the oil cartel OPEC to cut production adds to oversupply.

The world's top energy watchdog, the International Energy Agency (IEA), has put further downward pressure on the price as it slashed its oil demand forecast for next year.

The IEA said world demand will grow by 900,000 barrels per day, down 230,000 from its previous estimate.

It said that the cheap oil was not leading to more consumption and in rich countries "a tepid economic recovery, weak wage growth and ... deflationary pressures will further blunt the stimulus of lower prices".

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FTSE 100 Suffers Worst Week In Three Years

More than £110bn has been wiped off the value of Britain's leading companies as the FTSE 100 suffered its worst week in three years.

The index closed down 161.07 points on Friday, a loss of 2.49%, making an overall drop of 6.6% since Monday - the largest weekly fall since August 2011.

The slide reflected a new five-year low for the price of Brent crude and worries about the global outlook, particularly after more disappointing economic figures from China.

The FTSE 100 is dominated by business with an interest in the energy and commodity sectors, meaning it has taken a bigger hit from weak oil prices.

Oil stocks have taken a hit as weakening demand and the prospect of oversupply sparked a fall in the price of oil by 10% this week to around $62 (£39.50) a barrel.

The International Energy Agency on Friday cut its forecast for global demand for the fourth time in five months.

BP shares have fallen by 9% since the start of the week and are a fifth cheaper in the year to date.

In New York, the Dow Jones Industrial Average ended the week down 677.96 points or 3.8%, while markets in France and Germany were down by nearly 3%.

Traders were reacting negatively to the plunge in the oil price despite the likelihood that it could represent a $4bn (£2.5bn) stimulus to the world economy.

Laith Khalaf, senior analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown stockbrokers, said markets are mulling the question of whether a lower oil price is a "symptom or a cure" for weak global demand.

He said: "The answer is it is probably both, but the restorative qualities of a lower oil price are going to take some time to feed through, and in the meantime markets are focusing on the negatives."

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Yodel Suspends Collections Hitting Deliveries

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A courier firm handling a large number of Christmas online shopping deliveries has suspended new collections for up to two days.

Yodel, whose clients include Amazon and Marks and Spencer, has put on hold handling new parcels while it deals with a backlog from Black Friday.

While the company stresses it is continuing to make deliveries, the temporary freeze on collecting further parcels for distribution will lead to delays of up to three days for goods to arrive.

Recent retail promotions such as Black Friday and Cyber Monday have led to a surge in online orders for goods, especially in the run-up to Christmas.

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Gallery: Black Friday: Madness In The Shops

Yes, really. Shoppers have wrestled over a television. It has come that, people. "Black Friday" is in full swing in Britain and the stiff upper lip Brits are famous for has well and truly left the building. This photo was taken at an Asda in Wembley, north London

Britain's high streets, shopping centres and websites have been awash with discounts as more retailers than ever embraced US-style promotions, seeking to kickstart trading in the key Christmas period

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The police had to be called in at several supermarkets around the country overnight as thousands of customers hunted for bargains

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The rush to grab a deal soon descended into chaos as fights broke out at stores and websites of leading chains buckled under the strain. Continue through for more pictures

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Websites of leading retailers have been crippling under the weight of clicks

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Yodel has apologised to customers, and said it expects to resume normal service by Monday.

But angry shoppers have been venting their frustration on Twitter over delivery delays.

Nick Fowler tweeted: "Hi, ordered over 2 weeks ago still nothing and Yodel tracking just says awaiting collection."

One exasperated post by James & Courtney said: "Never use Yodel. Been waiting a week and a half for a parcel on 24hr service."

Marke branded Yodel "the absolute worst", while Naomi Dolby said her experience over a delayed parcel had been "absolutely shocking".

She wrote: "I can't get hold of a real person at Yodel to track it down."

And in reply to one customer's delivery query the bookseller Waterstones tweeted: "Yodel are currently handling more parcels than they expected, so some deliveries are taking longer than we would like."

Yodel said retail promotions such as Black Friday and Cyber Monday had led to "unexpectedly high parcel volumes across the carrier industry".

In response there had been a "deferment" on some new parcels coming into its sorting centres.

It said in a statement: "By Monday we expect to resume our normal service. We would like to apologise for any inconvenience this may cause to our clients and their customers.

"We are working closely with our clients on their forecasted parcel volumes for the coming weeks, based on this we are confident that the action we are taking will ensure that normal service is resumed after the weekend."

In a Q&A for concerned customers on its website, Yodel said: "We spent months planning for Christmas, but even with our experience and those of our clients we underestimated how massive the spikes would be. (We were not alone!)

"The whole of the retail supply chain has felt the impact. Retailer websites have been crashing, there have been backlogs in distribution centres and all parcel delivery companies have felt the strain."

Posing the question of "Who came up with the idea of Black Friday?", the firm joked: "We don't know but if you find out please can you let us know as we would like a chat with them!"

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