In the Autumn Budget 2025, delivered on 26 November 2025, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Rt Hon Rachel Reeves MP, set out a programme of investment aimed at ‘rebuilding Britain’ through the delivery of new homes, modern infrastructure and clean energy. The Budget reinforced the government’s ambitions on housing supply, planning reform, economic growth and regional regeneration.

In the Budget 2025, on 26 November 2025, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Rt Hon Rachel Reeves MP announced measures to encourage more companies to list on UK regulated markets as part of broader reforms to strengthen the competitiveness of UK capital markets.

In the Budget 2025, on 26 November 2025, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Rt Hon Rachel Reeves MP, confirmed a package of tax, labour market and regulatory reforms with significant implications for employment costs, workforce planning and HR compliance. The measures include above-inflation increases to the National Living Wage (NLW) and National Minimum Wage (NMW), further freezes to income tax and National Insurance contribution (NIC) thresholds, reforms to pension schemes and tax-favoured salary sacrifice, expansion of workplace benefit exemptions, new labour market enforcement arrangements and steps towards mandatory digital right to work checks.

In the Budget, on 26 November 2025, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Rt Hon Rachel Reeves MP, announced the UK government’s Budget 2025. The Lexis+® Energy team considers the key energy sector announcements and their impact below. We also feature expert commentary from Juliet Stradling, Partner at TLT LLP, Will Glover, Partner at Gowling WLG, and Daniel Kaufman, Matthew Honeyben and Matthew Brown, Partners at CMS.

In the Budget 2025, on 26 November 2025, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Rt Hon Rachel Reeves MP, announced a range of mostly tax-related measures in the financial services regulatory sphere.

In the Budget 2025, on 26 November 2025, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Rt Hon Rachel Reeves MP confirmed the introduction of a levy on higher education providers’ income from international students. This charge had been previously anticipated in the May 2025 Immigration White Paper. It will apply from the academic year 2028–29. The rate is £925 per international student per year of study, but each university will have an allowance for the first 220 international students per year, who are exempt from the charge. The document states that the income raised will be fully reinvested in higher education and skills, specifically to fund maintenance grants for disadvantaged students on priority courses. The government will keep the rate under review, and future decisions on how proceeds are used will be announced at the next Spending Review. Another immigration-related announcement is that the Fair Work Agency, which will launch in April 2026, will have a dedicated ‘hidden economy’ team. Its role will be to tackle sectors which see significant breaches of employment law, illegal working, and tax evasion.  The team’s initial focus will be on hand car washes, then expanding to other high-risk sectors. It will work jointly with HMRC, law enforcement, and local authorities to enforce compliance.

In the Budget 2025, on 26 November 2025, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Rt Hon Rachel Reeves MP, announced plans to promote growth in the life sciences and research and development (R&D) sector, which includes the NHS Neighbourhood Health Centres, £30m Government Funding for New RNA Therapy R&D Facility, UKRI Redirecting Significant R&D Funding into Life Sciences, biotechnology investment in Scotland, Support for University-based Research and Commercialisation, Metascience and AI for Science Strategy–Applicable to Life Sciences Research and Regional Investments Supporting Life Sciences Clusters.

In the Budget 2025 on 26 November 2025, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Rt Hon Rachel Reeves MP, made several announcements of relevance to local government practitioners, including on local government finance, governance, healthcare, social care, children’s social care, education, licensing, planning, public procurement and pensions. Alan Murdie, Director at Council Tax Legal Services and Tim Coolican, partner and head of health and social care sector at Anthony Collins, have commented on the package of measures.

In the Budget 2025, on 26 November 2025, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rt Hon Rachel Reeves MP, announced (i) a £2,000 annual cap (from April 2029) on salary sacrifice pension contributions eligible for NICs relief, (ii) a relaxation of defined benefit (DB) surplus rules from April 2027 to allow well-funded schemes to make incentivised surplus payments directly to members, and (iii) new CPI-linked inflation protection (capped at 2.5%) for pre-1997 PPF and FAS pensions where legacy schemes had provided such increases.

In the Autumn Budget 2025, delivered on 26 November 2025, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Rt Hon Rachel Reeves MP, confirmed the government’s commitment to ‘rebuild Britain’. The Budget reinforced the government’s ambitions on housing supply, planning reform, economic growth and regional regeneration. Chrisa Tsompani, partner at Davitt Jones Bould, and Fiona Sawyer, knowledge lawyer at Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer, comment on these measures.

In the Budget 2025, on 26 November 2025, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Rt Hon Rachel Reeves MP, set out a number of measures impacting the property industry, though not all of those that some commentators predicted. Chrisa Tsompani, Partner at Davitt Jones Bould, provides further commentary below on the Chancellor’s plan.

In the Autumn Budget 2025, on 26 November 2025, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Rt Hon Rachel Reeves MP, made several announcements of relevance to Public Law practitioners, including on cross-government efficiency and public sector reform, oversight of Covid-era procurement and fraud, devolution and new integrated settlements for mayoral authorities, justice and sentencing reform, planning and infrastructure delivery (including changes to judicial review), public procurement and the Balance Sheet Framework, and defence and security investment.