Afternoon.

It’s Tuesday 29th September: the government is getting into the electricity-grid business, diesel has hit a record high and more than half a million faces have been scanned at London stations.

Kettle on.

📅 On this day: In 1829, London's Metropolitan Police began patrolling the streets for the first time. Home Secretary Sir Robert Peel created the force, which is why British police officers eventually became known as “bobbies”.

The government is creating a new publicly owned company to invest in Britain's electricity grid, with the fairly straightforward ambition of making it quicker and cheaper to connect things to it.

Prime Minister Andy Burnham is announcing Great British Grid, or GB Grid, at the Labour conference today. It will sit within Great British Energy, the government's publicly owned energy company, and invest directly in electricity infrastructure alongside existing private network operators.

The problem it is trying to solve is that connecting new factories, businesses and renewable-energy projects to the grid can take years. GB Grid will invest alongside businesses and allow companies to build more of their own connection infrastructure, with the government hoping extra competition will speed things up.

Burnham has also set a goal of bringing Britain's energy costs into line with other European countries within ten years. Whether a new state-owned company actually achieves that is another question. But it marks a significant change in how the electricity network is run: the state is becoming a direct investor in an industry that has largely been privately operated since privatisation in the 1990s.

Britain's housing market is feeling the effect of more expensive borrowing. Banks approved 54,918 mortgages for house purchases in August, according to new figures from the Bank of England. That's down from around 56,100 in July and the lowest number since December 2023.

Mortgage approvals are useful because they give us an early indication of how many people are actually preparing to buy homes. When borrowing becomes more expensive, fewer buyers can afford the repayments, so approvals tend to fall.

Meanwhile, people are borrowing more elsewhere. Consumer credit, which includes credit cards, personal loans and car finance, increased by almost £2.5bn in August. Annual consumer-credit growth was the fastest since records began in 1993.

That doesn't necessarily mean households are borrowing simply to pay the bills. But rising consumer borrowing alongside falling mortgage demand gives the Bank of England another interesting little pile of numbers to contemplate while deciding what to do with interest rates.

The average price of diesel has reached 199.18p a litre, the highest on record. That beats the previous record set in June 2022 and means filling a typical 55-litre family car now costs almost £110. Petrol has climbed to 174.13p a litre, making the same tank nearly £96.

Prices have surged as conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine disrupt global fuel supplies. And diesel prices don't only matter to people driving diesel cars: lorries and vans move much of what Britain buys, so higher fuel costs can eventually find their way into the price of everything from food to deliveries.

In other words, £2-a-litre diesel isn't just a petrol-station problem.

British Transport Police has scanned more than half a million faces during a trial of live facial recognition at London railway stations. The technology compares people walking past cameras with a police watchlist and alerts officers when it thinks it has found a match. Officers then decide whether to intervene.

During the first six months, the £320,000 trial produced just one alert from more than 500,000 faces scanned. It was a false match and resulted in no arrest. The trial began in February and has since been expanded to Underground stations. It will now continue until November while police assess its effectiveness on the rail network.

Councils in England are getting new powers intended to stop people becoming homeless and keep more social housing in the system. Under changes to the Social Housing Bill, councils will be able to refer homeless households directly to housing associations. Public services will also have a new duty to work together when somebody is at risk of losing their home.

Councils and housing associations will also get eight weeks' notice before certain social homes are sold outside the sector, giving them a chance to buy them first. The idea is to intervene earlier rather than waiting until somebody needs temporary accommodation, while also stopping the stock of social housing shrinking unnecessarily.

New homes being built in flood-risk areas could eventually become difficult to insure, according to the boss of Britain's biggest insurer. Aviva chief executive Amanda Blanc warned that around 110,000 homes have been built in the highest-risk flood zones over the past decade. The insurer estimates another 115,000 could be built there over the next ten years if the trend continues.

That has consequences beyond having to keep the wellies somewhere accessible. Mortgage lenders generally require buildings insurance, so a home becoming effectively uninsurable can also make it harder to mortgage or sell.

Argentina has threatened international legal action against the UK over plans to develop the Falkland Islands' first commercial oilfield. President Javier Milei has given Britain two weeks to halt the Sea Lion project, which sits north of the islands and is expected to begin producing oil in 2028. 

Argentina claims sovereignty over the Falklands, while the UK says the islanders have the right to decide their own future. In a 2013 referendum, almost all participating islanders voted to remain a British overseas territory. 

Milei says Argentina will pursue arbitration if the project continues. The dispute over the islands is hardly new. Commercial oil production gives it a significant new dimension.

Scotland has ended up with more whisky than the world currently wants. After years of booming demand, some distilleries are pausing production as exports weaken and stocks build up. The surplus has revived an old industry term: a “whisky loch”.

Whisky producers have an unusual supply problem because Scotch has to mature for years before it can be sold. The bottles arriving today were therefore planned when demand looked rather healthier.

Several distilleries have temporarily stopped making more while existing barrels continue ageing. Which is one way of dealing with excess stock that becomes considerably less appealing when you're selling yoghurt.

Roman Bath appears to have been rather bigger than archaeologists thought. Excavations beneath the city's Assembly Rooms have uncovered a network of Roman ditches alongside pottery, coins, glassware and part of a military helmet.

Bath was known to the Romans as Aquae Sulis and is famous for its baths and temple complex. But these finds are farther from the known centre of Roman activity and suggest people were using a larger part of what is now the city.

Archaeologists reckon more remains could therefore be sitting underneath the surrounding Georgian streets. Bath: apparently not content with having one historical period to show off about.

Have a great day.

See you tomorrow.

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