Afternoon.

It’s Wednesday 7th October: the government is considering extra help with rising energy bills, Royal Mail is cutting up to 2,500 jobs and old coal mines are finding a rather unexpected second career.

Kettle on.

📅 On this day: In 1959, the Soviet spacecraft Luna 3 sent back the first photographs of the far side of the Moon, revealing a landscape nobody on Earth had ever seen before.

The government is reportedly considering more than £1bn of extra help for lower-income households as energy bills rise. 

One option is increasing the £150 Warm Home Discount, which gives eligible households money off their electricity bill. January bills are currently forecast to rise by more than £400 a year for a typical household, largely because of higher energy prices following the Iran conflict.

The government is also looking at whether other support could be expanded, with Chancellor John Healey under pressure to soften the impact of rising bills in his Budget.

Nothing has been finalised yet, so this isn't extra money heading into people's accounts just yet. But with another expensive winter looming, some form of additional support now appears to be firmly on the government's shopping list.

Royal Mail plans to cut up to 2,500 jobs by the end of next year as it tries to slim down its operations.

These aren't posties or delivery drivers. The cuts are aimed at head-office and support roles, with Royal Mail hoping to make most of the reductions through people leaving naturally or taking voluntary redundancy.

Behind the restructuring is a fairly dramatic change in what Royal Mail actually delivers. Letter volumes have fallen by more than 70% from their peak as everything from bank statements to birthday invitations has moved online, while parcels have become much more important.

The rules governing Royal Mail have also recently been loosened. Its Universal Service Obligation, the requirement to provide a nationwide postal service at affordable prices, was changed last year so second-class letters no longer have to be delivered six days a week.

So this isn't the end of the postie. It is another sign that a business built around delivering Britain's letters is having to become rather less about letters.

An old coal mine in County Durham is now heating homes.

The new system at Seaham Garden Village uses water that has collected in abandoned mines and been naturally warmed underground. Heat pumps raise the temperature further before sending the heat to homes through a local network.

The scheme will serve 750 homes, with the network capable of expanding to serve up to 1,500. Similar projects are being explored elsewhere, meaning some of Britain's old coalfields could end up providing energy again, just rather more politely this time.

Kemi Badenoch has used Conservative Party conference to set out how her party would cut taxes if it returned to government.

Among the proposals are removing family homes from inheritance tax and halving employers' National Insurance for workers aged 21 to 24, with the aim of making younger people cheaper to employ.

Badenoch says the Conservatives have identified around £70bn of potential savings from welfare and government spending to help pay for tax cuts and reduce borrowing.

These are opposition proposals rather than changes heading our way now, but they give us a much clearer idea of what the Conservatives plan to offer voters at the next election.

UK house prices didn't move in September, either compared with August or with a year earlier, according to figures from Lloyds.

Higher borrowing costs are making mortgages more expensive and buyers more cautious, although new mortgage enquiries actually rose at their fastest pace since February.

Markets currently think another Bank of England interest-rate rise in November is highly likely. That would be useful for savers, rather less charming for anyone about to remortgage.

British travellers arriving in the UK can now start using airport eGates without scanning their passport.

The new system takes a live photo of your face and checks it against your passport, immigration and travel information automatically. It's starting with a small number of gates at East Midlands Airport before being rolled out more widely, with contactless eGates expected at all UK airports by early 2027.

For now it's only available to British citizens entering the UK on a British passport. So this is contactless border control, not permission to discover halfway to Gatwick that yours is still in the kitchen drawer.

The owner of South West Water is asking shareholders for £550m as it tries to improve its finances and infrastructure.

Pennon says the money will help fund a £1bn investment programme after years of pollution problems and operational failures. It's also cutting its dividend, while insisting the extra investment won't mean further increases to customers' bills.

Investors were not delighted. Pennon's shares fell around 20% after the announcement.

Jaguar has unveiled the production version of its new electric Type 01, a £130,000 reinvention of the brand aimed squarely at wealthy buyers.

It has more than 1,000 horsepower, a claimed range of up to 400 miles and no rear window. It's also longer than a standard UK parking space, which feels like a fairly confident approach to the concept of parking.

The car will be built in Britain and is expected to go on sale by the middle of next year. Jaguar hopes it can attract a younger, richer audience after a dramatic rebrand and a difficult period for parent company JLR.

Twenty children in Devon are being recruited to breed harvest mice at home before releasing them into the wild.

The project was inspired by teenagers Eva Wishart and Emily Smith, who started breeding the tiny native mice themselves and have already helped release hundreds.

The new recruits, aged eight to 13, will get mice, equipment and training, with the aim of breeding another 250 for release by next September.

Harvest mice are Britain's smallest rodents and build distinctive woven nests in long grass. Which means 20 sets of parents in Devon are about to discover whether ‘I'm helping biodiversity’ is a convincing reason to have considerably more mice in the house.

Have a great day.

See you tomorrow.

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