Pocket money... houses remain unaffordable

⬤ If your passport is due for renewal soon, it’s worth applying now. From 11 April the cost of applying for a passport will rise by 7% on average. An online adult application will climb from £82.50 to £88.50. A child’s will increase by £4 to £57.50.

It is also worth checking the age of your passport. If your passport is more than ten years old, you could be refused entry to the EU. Post-Brexit, EU countries will not accept passports issued more than ten years ago. Passports issued after 2018 are valid for exactly ten years. Prior to that you could carry over up to nine unused months from a previous passport so your passport could be valid for up to ten years and nine months. “As a result, some people have passports that have not officially expired, and are valid for travel in the rest of the world, but not in parts of Europe because they were issued more than ten years ago,” says Marc Ashdown on BBC News.

⬤ “Despite a headline cut of 12.3% in April’s energy price cap, yet again standing charges are rising,” reports Hilary Osborne in The Guardian. Standing charges are the daily fees you pay to have access to electricity and gas. Under the new price cap, energy firms are allowed to increase their standing charges, and most are doing so. According to data from charity National Energy Action, the average standing charge for dual-fuel customers paying by direct debit is now 83% higher than it was in April 2019. “Five years ago, the charges added up to £182.27 a year, while from this April they will be £334.07, accounting for about a fifth of average bills.”

⬤ “House prices have become more affordable for the second year running,” reports David

Brenchley in The Sunday Times. The average house price in England is 8.3 times the average salary, a drop from 8.4 in 2022 and 9.1 in 2021, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

In Wales the average house price has dropped from 7.4 times average salary in 2022 to 6.1 today. But houses are still unaffordable according to the ONS’s own criteria: the average is above five times earnings, then house prices are officially unaffordable. The only area where house prices are considered affordable is the northeast of England, where the ratio is 4.8.