The 2024 Autumn Budget marked the first to be delivered by a Labour Chancellor in 14 years, and the first to be delivered by a female Chancellor in the more than 800 years since the office was created. As if this wasn’t momentous enough, Rachel Reeves was already on record as saying that she wants “a new start” that would be remembered alongside other momentous Labour milestones such as the creation of the NHS (1948), Wilson’s ‘White Heat of Technology’ speech (1964) and Tony Blair’s “new dawn” (1997). But beyond the political symbolism this Budget also represented an important economic inflection point: the Chancellor needed to find the balance between caution and optimism, between paying down the national debt and investing for the future, in the Prime Minister’s words – the trade-off between ‘tough tax rises’ now and ‘better days ahead’. A second challenge was to offer the vision and certainty for Government departments to back up the policy and priorities already set out in the first 100 days.
This insight focus considers the key announcements and implications of the Budget for planning, development and local economic growth.
