WILL GIFT FOR CHARITY
AS chief executive at the British Heart Foundation (BHF) I see first-hand the incredible impact gifts left in wills make to the charity.
Research funded by the BHF has helped to halve death rates from heart and circulatory diseases over the past 50 years and so much of our work has only been possible thanks to the amazing individuals who have remembered the BHF in their will.
These special gifts fund more than a quarter of all cardiovascular research in the UK, which makes them incredibly important to help us beat heartbreak forever for the 7 million people living with these conditions right now.
In the past year alone, residents in the North West left more than £8.5 million in their wills to the British Heart Foundation to help fund lifesaving research into heart and circulatory disease, including heart disease, stroke and vascular dementia.
I would personally like to honour these people and express our gratitude for the research breakthroughs and thousands of lives they have helped to save.
But there’s still so much more to do, and there are approximately 850,000 people in the North West living with cardiovascular disease right now.
A gift of any size, after you’ve provided for your loved ones, will enable the BHF to continue to fund pioneering research to find future cures and treatments into heart and circulatory conditions.
A recent survey to support ‘ Will Power’, the BHF’s campaign to encourage people to consider leaving a legacy in their will, showed that the British public would like to be remembered for their generosity, kindness and humour over their wealth or professional work achievements.
Seven out of 10 of those asked said they wished they could do more to help others and a quarter said they wanted their will to improve the lives of others.
I would like to encourage those people to download our free wills guide and I must take the opportunity to thank all of the generous supporters – past, present and future – for their contributions to the BHF.
We couldn’t make medical breakthroughs such as heart transplants and pacemakers without your generosity and support and it is because of your support that we continue to fund £100 million of research into heart and circulatory conditions every year – thank you.
To find out more about leaving a gift in your will and to download a free wills guide, please visit bhf.org. uk/wills rowing cap on councils to allow them to build many more homes is a victory for bold thinking and common sense, according to the Federation Of Master Builders (FMB).
This is the most exciting, and potentially transformative, announcement on council housing for many years.
It is something the house building sector and local authorities have been crying out for since the last economic downturn as a means by which to increase house building.
Indeed, the only times the UK has built sufficient numbers of homes overall is when we’ve had a thriving council house building programme.
Local authorities have a strong interest in delivering new affordable homes and many would have the appetite to directly fund this, but have been frustrated from doing so by an artificial cap on their ability to borrow against their assets to build homes.
In a victory for common sense Mrs May has now signalled that the borrowing cap will be scrapped to allow councils to build many more new homes.
We believe this could also have the added benefit of expanding the capacity of the private sector by providing more opportunities for SME builders.
In this way, a stronger public sector house building programme can complement and help support a stronger, more diverse private sector.
The private sector will continue to take the lead in delivering new homes, and to ensure it can do so, we need to continue to lay the foundations for a diverse private sector in which new firms can more easily enter the market and small firms can more easily prosper and grow.
However, in order to deliver the number of new homes the Government is targeting, it is going to be nec- essary for the private and public sectors to both be firing on all cylinders.
That’s why this announcement is so welcome.
However, as much as this is a bold and praiseworthy move by the Prime Minister, new homes of any sort will not get built if we as an industry don’t have the people we need to build them.
Recent announcements on postBrexit immigration rules, if implemented as currently understood, will be a serious threat to our ability to deliver on the promise of this policy.
The failure of the Government so far to listen to the construction industry could unfortunately threaten the delivery of the Government’s increasingly bold moves to solve the housing crisis.