Should you worry about flights being cancelled and jet fuel shortages?

0:02Lee Boyce: Welcome to This Is Money podcast sponsored by Trading 212. Download the Trading 212 app and open a cash ISA with promo code TIM to get the 12 month bonus promo rate of 4.1 % terms apply. I'm Georgie Frost and joining me in Lee Boyce is Helen Crane. And coming up, another flight win for our Helen, this time for a person who'd been waiting six years for a refund from Emirates after a pandemic cancellation. cancellation. But we can't all have crane on our case for us. So Helen would tell us everything we need to know about flight cancellations and our rights. Also today, more on our high streets.

0:38Lee Boyce: Did anyone actually think the change from WH Smith to TG Jones was going to be a good one? Well, now hundreds of jobs are at risk as TG Jones plans to axe 150 stores. Meanwhile, as more branches disappear from our towns, could banking hubs replace them in yours? Plus, why people selling off chunks of their garden and the six watches to invest in that experts say will become classics. Don't forget, you're up to date with all the latest breaking money news. Just go to thisismoney.co.uk or download the app. But first, summer travel plans continue to be plunged into chaos. In the past couple of weeks, airlines have cut more than two million seats from their May schedules amid growing fears of a fuel shortage.

1:19Lee Boyce: And they've done reduced schedules in anticipation of further trouble to come. So we recently spoke about Helen helping to get a refund for a poor couple who needs to get back to Islamabad after sadly their son died. Well, she's got another victory as well. But Helen, as I said earlier, she cannot do it all. So we have a what you need to know cheat sheet in case your flight is cancelled. But first, Helen, just keep us up to date. What is the latest situation for holidays and flights? Is it getting worse, sort of staying the same, getting any better?

1:53Helen Crane: I think it depends on the situation you're in. So obviously, when this conflict first kicked off, it mostly affected people who were travelling on flights through the Middle East or were going to the Middle East. Obviously, you know, with the war first breaking out, it wasn't possible to travel through there. So that was kind of the first wave. But now what we're seeing is people being affected by oil shortages and jet fuel shortages, or more kind of correctly, anticipated jet fuel shortages in the future. So airlines aren't running out of fuel yet, but they're basically worried that the longer the conflict goes on, fuel might need to be essentially rationed.

2:34Helen Crane: So as you said, what they're doing is they're cutting down the number of seats they're offering, which essentially means the number of planes that are taking off. It seems like what will happen is maybe flights that aren't full might be merged with other flights to save fuel. And that's something that the government has recently given airlines the power to do. Or flights that aren't full might be cancelled altogether. So this is a big worry for anyone who's got a holiday planned. And this year, you know, I think it's the sort of thing that people are already talking about. Some of my friends have mentioned it to me.

3:08Helen Crane: Is my holiday going to be OK? Am I going to turn up at the airport and it's going to be cancelled? One thing I will say, the airlines have tended to be pretty good on A, sort of rescheduling someone's flight if they can, or giving them their money back if they can't go so far. Obviously, you know, that doesn't cancel out this or stress of having your plans changed at the last minute. But they have been pretty decent on sort of helping customers, not leaving them out of pocket. Yeah, it's a difficult situation for anyone who's got something planned for this summer.

3:42Lee Boyce: Indeed it is. So tell me about your latest win, Helen.

3:46Helen Crane: Yeah, so this is actually nothing to do with the Middle East conflict. This dates back to the first COVID lockdown, so more than six years ago. If you will take your mind back to then, a lot of people had flights, holidays, cancelled at the last minute. obviously flights weren't able to go or if they were able to go, you know, different rules in different countries as to what people were able to do, whether they could travel, say, through everyone's holidays into absolute sort of pandemonium. And this is someone who wrote to me a few months ago and said, unbelievably, that they were still waiting for a refund on a flight that was cancelled in April 2020.

4:25Helen Crane: And he's the British person who lives in Thailand, and he comes back every year to see his elderly parents and this was a sort of regular annual trip cost him about a thousand one hundred pounds for his return flights from bangkok to gatwick um but the early 2020 you know no problems that's going to be fine isn't it why what what possible reason could you not take a flight in april 2020 um but then everything of course sort of kicked off and he did all the right things he filled out a form on the emirates website that's the airline that this was with actually filled it out two times but never ended up getting his money back obviously covid was strange time lots of things to think about and it just kind of fell to the back of his mind really over the years um but he got in touch with me saying you know is it too late if i can't get this money i'll just you know chalk it up to experience and forget it but i just is there any chance i can still get it back so i got in touch with emirates and uh they did manage to get his money back for him he was obviously owed this you know uh at the time airlines as they're doing now would tend to say if your flight doesn't go uh you can get a full refund you know everything you're owed and that's what emirates did do um forever i think it was a set period between sort of uh the end of february and end of may 2020 um sort of no questions asked a complete refund so he was completely entitled to the money um if that happened to you you are still entitled to the money.

5:54Helen Crane: It was basically, it was a sort of technical issue that meant he didn't get it back initially. So his flight was quite early in the lockdown. So Emirates hadn't sort of set up their formal refund system yet. So there was a special form that people had to fill up, but that hadn't been created yet. So he just kind of went through their normal refund portal. And then a few months later, they asked everyone to resubmit on their new COVID refund portal, which is something that he sort of missed, you know, didn't see the email or whatever and never did it. And just because of that, he never ended up getting his money back, which I think is quite shocking.

6:28Helen Crane: You know, I think at that point, if it's been going on for so long, it should be really the airline's responsibility to say this money is sort of outstanding from so long ago. He did manage to get his money back. It's just unfortunately, I think it just becomes a case, especially with airlines. And look, I get that during COVID and now they're obviously extremely busy. This is an unexpected situation, and, you know, the people trying to get in touch with them must be absolutely huge. But, you know, these are huge businesses and I don't think it's necessarily an excuse. They should have this infrastructure in place or be able to get the infrastructure in place to sort of deal with this and get people their money back.

7:06Helen Crane: So glad I could help him. But it does kind of make me think, like, in another six years' time, am I still going to be getting emails from people? He had flights cancelled in the great sort of Middle East conflict of 2026.

7:17Lee Boyce: Well, let's hope not, Helen. And let's hope not. So let's go through some of them. You have an article on your website that looks at what your rights are if your flight is cancelled. And you said it doesn't have to be for the Iran conflict. There are lots of reasons why this might happen. So we don't have to go through them all. But what are kind of the main issues? Give us a few more tools in our box, as it were, that we can use in the fight to get our money back.

7:43Helen Crane: Yeah, so there are plenty of things you can do to get your money back. The first thing, of course, is go to the airline. I guess, actually, for people going on holiday, the thing they might most want is to get another flight as quickly as possible. And that is a right that you have. So if your flight's cancelled, you're entitled to an alternative flight at the earliest opportunity or at a later date, if you prefer. Or you can ask for a refund. And that applies if the flight's cancelled under normal circumstances. But it's been confirmed that this will also apply if it's cancelled due to this jet fuel supply issue.

8:19Helen Crane: And actually, importantly, I think a lot of people don't necessarily realise this. If your airline can't give you a suitable alternative flight, you can ask to be booked on a flight with a different airline. And your original airline has to pay for that. If they don't offer to do it themselves, you can book it yourself and seek compensation from the original airline. So your protections are actually quite strong. It's worth saying that these rights are just for travellers, leaving from the UK. If it's your return flight, you're leaving from a different country, the rules might be slightly different.

8:51Helen Crane: And also, if you do ask for a refund, you should get it within seven days. I imagine a lot of people, given all the complaints that are going on, airlines might start sort of missing that deadline, but you are supposed to get it within seven days. Another thing that I think people might get slightly annoyed about is airlines have this right now given everything that's going on and trying to they're essentially trying to get as many passengers as possible onto one plane so that you know save jet fuel but still also allow as many people as possible to fly so airlines are now able to group passengers together say you had a flight at 10 a.m to Lanzarote and that was cancelled they could now put you on a 11 a.m flight to Lanzarote maybe with the same airline or maybe with a different airline with other other passengers in order to save fuel.

9:41Helen Crane: The government says this is sort of intended to stop last minute cancellation. So you're still, you know, you are still going on your flight, but you know, it can be sort of quite disruptive. But in these sort of cases, airlines do still have a duty to sort of look after their passengers. So you know, if you don't like the other flight you've been put on, you can still ask for a refund, you can ask for a different flight, you know, they're going to have to be quite flexible with passengers, because this is obviously quite disruptive.

10:08Lee Boyce: Helen, apart from your good self, where's the final port of call if nothing's happening?

10:13Helen Crane: So there's a lot of kind of different routes you can go down. The first obviously is to complain to the airline through their official complaints process. If you've booked a package holiday, you've got Atoll or Abta that you can complain to. Another thing that's worth mentioning is travel insurance, because I think people are wondering whether they might be covered by that if something like this happens to them. So obviously, when the conflict first kicked off, a lot of people found that they weren't covered for cancelled or delayed flights because of these clauses in insurance saying that acts of war weren't covered by insurance.

10:51Helen Crane: So that actually caught me out when I got stuck in Australia at the start of the conflict. And we didn't get any money back other than the sort of refund from the flight that we'd booked. It is kind of difficult with this jet fuel thing, because what people are wondering is whether the jet fuel shortage, which is obviously caused by the conflict in Iran, still counts in insurance terms as a sort of act of war or an act of conflict. That's kind of not clear at the minute. And I think it's a bit too early for people to have put through claims and seeing whether they've been accepted or rejected.

11:25Helen Crane: So that's kind of something to watch out for, I would say. But yeah, still, I think it's a good idea to get insurance. But just be aware that it's possible that insurers could use this kind of loophole to get out of it. But we'll have to wait and see.

11:39Lee Boyce: Yeah, always check the T's and C's. I remember that time in Seville, actually during the pandemic sort of era, where I got robbed from a rental car. unfortunately even though i had two travel insurance because i forgot i had the first and then i've done that now quite a few times by the way but at least i'm over covered but it didn't actually make a difference because i couldn't claim on either because i hadn't checked the t's and c's the final one on this one how do you it's quite difficult how do you work out what travel insurance is the best for you or what you should be getting well georgie obviously when you

12:14Georgie Frost: book a holiday sometimes insurance is at the at the bottom of the pile of things to do because is sometimes booking a holiday has taken a lot of mental effort already the flights the hotel the destination um and i don't know if people are like me i like to pour over all of these details and really kind of get it right because holidays typically if you're taking one two or maybe three a year you want to make sure that they are giving you you know the best experience possible in terms of insurance then you might then go oh i'll do it you know a bit nearer the time and then i think people just forget to do it or potentially just don't do it whatsoever which is not good you should do it as soon as you book because it's going to give you the most amount of protection possible but when you're looking through uh policies you've got to look for um wording that is in this in these because a lot of them will not uh cover you for things that are going on in in the middle east it's just not going to cover you for a war hostile acts civil war military action um and those kind of things it's unclear about the fuel shortage element of this there's not really it's not really been a thing before but you want to check with your insurer whether or not you're going to get covered if something does happen and the airline links it to fuel uh fuel shortages but really the onus is on the airline because they can't wriggle out of not sorting you out because of fuel shortages the other thing to look out for as well is the fcdo advice so basically you the organization that will say don't go to a certain country unless it's essential and one of those countries that's currently on that list is the UAE, which can invalidate insurance and can make it basically going without having cover.

13:48Georgie Frost: But just to go back right at the start of all this, I have a degree of sympathy with airlines on this. The cost of fuel has gone up from£73 a barrel in the end of February, peaked at£155 at the start of April, so essentially it's doubled and it's currently at about£134 a barrel. So you can see that, you know, we are used to a diet of quite cheap flights in this country. We can kind of get around Europe for peanuts, really. I mean, we always see those tweets, don't we, but it's cheaper to fly to Seville, we'll see Seville as a lot, maybe more like a Barcelona, than it is to get a train in this country from London to Manchester.

14:28Georgie Frost: You know, it's just a fact that it is quite cheap and we're used to it. The move that's a little bit worrying is that airlines are petitioning to have fuel supply shortages to be seen as extraordinary circumstances because currently that is not the case so that's why they're having to make sure that they can get you on another flight another option also that we should mention is booking by credit card because it just gives you extra protections with section 75 then you really i feel like you really are fully covered airlines should be sorting you at first port of call you should have insurance if you put a credit card you're going to get extra kind of coverage it is on everyone's lips i would say i've had numerous conversations in the last couple of weeks people saying they're nervous about their their overseas holiday if it's going to flights going to be cancelled we've had this conversation on the podcast before i quite often put flights on the strength of the time of when the flight is going having a young family flying at 10 a.m is so much easier than flying at 6 a.m when you're trying to rust with kids out of a deep slumber in the middle of the night and get your holiday off on the worst possible start so it's for all those reasons it's not great i think there's going to be a boom in staycations this year i would imagine that a lot of people are looking at staying closer to home uh just because of all of this disruption and to be honest last last month georgia i went to sussex to celebrate my wife's 40th and then you're ramping around the south downs we had a lovely lunch and champagne at raffinney's uh wine house absolutely beautiful there looked over and thought yeah i could do this and i strapped my two-year-old in on one of those baby carriers took her for a good like four or five mile walk around alfriston and all these lovely villages around sussex and i thought i'm not going to go abroad this year for the first time in quite a while like i'm just going to go and unpick what there is around britain i wouldn't be surprised that's a kind of mantra that people are doing but i would still if you want to go on an overseas holiday if you want to go abroad just make sure you're doing those three things you know making sure that you know you're right with with your airline make sure you've got good comprehensive insurance and make sure you're getting that Section 75 protection with a credit card.

16:33Georgie Frost: If you do do a credit card, obviously pay it straight away. Otherwise, you're going to get charged.

16:37Lee Boyce: Fabulously, fabulous tips. And yeah, I agree with you. My dad lives in Sussex. Beautiful, beautiful.

16:43Georgie Frost: Lovely part of the world. Lovely part of the world.

16:47Lee Boyce: One area, though, of Britain that's sort of struggled, shall we say, over recent years, the high street. We've mentioned it numerous times, haven't we, Lee, on the pod. Latest chain in trouble is TG Jones, who they, you might think, yes, old WH Smith, basically. The rebrand that is probably one of the most terrible rebrands anyway. Its new private equity owners, Modela Capital, launched a restructuring plan this week that would see 150 branches close with hundreds of jobs at risk. Now, they bought the chain last year for 40 million quid, and they're blaming the restructuring or the fact that they have to do it on the fact that they say they were forced to ditch the household brand name WH Smith by the parent company.

17:35Lee Boyce: Now, of course, you will have noticed WH Smith is still in places like, you know, airports and train stations. That part of the business was doing well. Unfortunately, the TG Jones, honestly, Lee, I'll get into this in a sec, but another big change to the high street in recent years has been the disappearance of bank branches. So could banking hubs be on their way to your town? We'll dig into that into more detail. But TG Jones, I am just so curious. You know when they have these meetings and they have a big whiteboard and they go, right, I've got this great plan or the flip board. And they go, right, it was WH Smith and we're going to call it TG Jones with a slightly thinner font, but essentially the same.

18:19Lee Boyce: It's not Smith, it's Jones. Do you know what the worst people went? Great idea. Yeah, brilliant. That is brilliant.

18:25Georgie Frost: I don't know if I could put it any more eloquently than that, Georgie. I mean, we've had a bit of ridicule with TG Jones around the office the last couple of weeks, to be quite frank, because, you know, it was an incredibly strange rebound, as you're kind of alluding to there.

18:40Lee Boyce: And that part about the WH Smith, well, they knew what they were buying.

18:43Georgie Frost: Exactly. They knew that they couldn't keep WH Smith's name. It didn't make any sense, that kind of excuse of, well, we couldn't call it WH Smith anymore. I was like, well, I think you knew that when you paid all that money for, you know, basically the shops and then having to rebrand it. And yeah, it's just like they've gone like a letter away in the alphabet with the T and the G and then gone, well, Smith, well, not Jones. And then as Hugo Duncan, our economics editor, city editor here said, T.G. Jones was a really famous Everton centre-back from the 1930s. And I was like, oh, really? He's the original ball-playing centre-back.

19:16Georgie Frost: I was like, interesting. Okay. I don't think that came into the consideration when they came up with that name. I'm pretty sure. I'm guessing they didn't look it up. But in all seriousness, I think this has been, I think with shops on the high street, they obviously have some, they've got pressure. They've got pressure from the online retailers. You can't not suggest that that's the case. And you also have to remember the cost of overheads. Staffing costs are getting more expensive. Minimum wage, all that kind of thing also at play. And our habits, you know, going into these sort of out-of-town retail parks and all that kind of thing.

19:54Georgie Frost: It just means that the battle for the high street is getting harder and harder for it to remain as is. And this is going to leave another gaping hole. It's just that the Modelo structure seems incredibly strange, you know, because it also took on Claire's accessories. I think Claire's is quite, it does have a USB, Claire's. you know that is a sort of place where most people most uh young girls i would say would go and get their ears picked we were having this conversation in the office as well you know it was like a go-to place and then from there you've got a captive audience the trouble is you take i've got young daughters and my seven-year-old's going to claire's and she picked things up and i'll be like i'm not paying 20 quid for that um because it looks like it's not worth 20 quid and that was i feel like that was what they were kind of relying on and also the original factory shop another brand that Medellar, Boughton, that's kind of great.

20:45Georgie Frost: Also, Hobbycraft closed 18 of its 124 stores last year. T.G. Jones has 5 ,000 staff. And I'll tell you a little story. Last October, I was on jury service in Southend. And there's a T.G. Jones in Southend that replaced the W.H. Smith. I thought I'd go in there just out of curiosity. I mean, I just couldn't understand what the need for it was. I didn't know what its USP was. it felt like a very big shop with not much in it couldn't quite get my head around what what it was

21:18Lee Boyce: trying to do but the thing is there's one in derby which i always go to after the football and i just putter in look around the books dad looks around the railway magazines it's just wh smith and isn't the reality wh smith got rid of those high street chains because they weren't doing anything compared to certainly what their you know transport as it were network of shops was doing. That was where they were getting the money. The high street just wasn't working. So I don't really understand. I get now why they did the name because they kind of wanted that cachet of WH Smith and almost a bit of a two fingers saying, if you're going to stop us from taking WH Smith, we're going to do a name that's very similar.

21:56Lee Boyce: But if you don't change what the brand is about and you go into a store and you, Lee, as a punter, doesn't understand what it's about, you are going to fail. Like what did they actually do to change it, to make it more viable

22:08Georgie Frost: on the high street well what it feels like it feels like they've just slapped a name on it this being not really giving much thought and it's like the supply lines you know were kind of probably similar to what it was when it was wh smith but just slowly have gotten a little bit worse and what that means is that the stores are just not appealing to go into and you know shoppers you've got it you've got a chance with shoppers um you know they'll give you a chance and then if you don't hook them in first or maybe second time and they're not coming back um and And that's the thing, and I think it's where it's found.

22:40Georgie Frost: Yeah, Modelo itself has taken on these five major brands, 900 stores, 10 ,000 staff. 300 of these stores have already closed down. So this is across all of the different brands that it's bought. And one or two and a half thousand jobs have been lost. And Charlotte Brompton Childs, who's National Secretary of the GMB Union, actually did her assistant of work experience at the GMB Union in Wimbledon back in the day, when I was university, interesting place, said that this is a retail bloodbath and workers are being left for dead. T.G. Jones, I keep going to say T.J. Jones, but I think it's T.K. Max, T.J.

23:15Georgie Frost: Hughes, then T.J. T.G. Jones. It's just such a mouthful. Staff are now standing on the brink wondering if they're next. Communities are paying the price for fouled boardroom experiments. I can get the message. So, you know, I hate to see the high streets dying, but I think what's happening, again, I'm sure I've said this before, but it feels like the big high streets, the big main cities, excluding London, but the main kind of, I'm talking about cities with 100 ,000, 150 ,000 people, it feels like people are getting sucked out of the high street and they're keeping it more to their local community.

23:51Georgie Frost: And I feel like they're thriving much more away from all of the big chains. These smaller high streets, towns of 25 ,000 to 50 ,000 people, they still have chains, but they have a lot more independent shops that seem to be thriving a lot more. And then you only have to see these out-of-time retail parks at the weekend. That's where everyone's going. And those car park, absolute hellish places to be. But people seem to love them. You know, free parking for one. You can take your shopping from the shop to your boot pretty quickly rather than having to navigate the high street and having it all on.

24:25Georgie Frost: And things are just changing. The world is changing. And as you say, I think W.H. Smith kind of wanted to focus on its profit-making part of the business, which is train stations, airports. You know, the WH Smith and Liverpool Street train station, I think it's about four quid for a bottle of water or something.

24:42Lee Boyce: I mean, it's maybe a bit unfair. Maybe it's a little bit less than that.

24:45Georgie Frost: But it's one of the most expensive shops you can ever imagine. When did we start paying like£1.50 for a bag of crisps? What's that all about? I thought the price point of a bag of crisps was about 50p. But it's doing all right, the actual WH Smith. So lesson must be learned here.

25:02Lee Boyce: I was going to say, I don't know if we get to a certain age and we stop anchoring our prices. So when I think about what things are worth, I refer back to a£10 CD. I don't know what happened, but I kind of think, wow, you can buy a coffee now for a fiver. You can buy two coffees for a CD, Georgie.

25:21Georgie Frost: Georgie, go to a charity shop. You can go and get CDs for 50p now, so you can get 20 CDs. I wouldn't know what to play it on.

25:27Lee Boyce: But look, you know, this is a sad state of affairs for the high street. And I will say this as someone who spends a lot of time in Toronto, not quite a few North American places, but just take a step outside of the main centre. And the thing that I've missed, because I spent a bit of time in a place called Oakville, there's no towns, there's no communities, no villages.

25:48Georgie Frost: It is these retail parks and they're horrible.

25:51Lee Boyce: What I was doing for a day, you know, to get a bit of socialisation was sitting in a supermarket coffee chain. I mean, that's what it got to. And I thought, really be careful about what we're losing here.

26:02Georgie Frost: There's something in that though, Georgie, I think. I think that we are getting a bit Americanised in terms of our shopping habits and what we're doing in our lives. And I think retail parks are a massive part of that. I'd say in the last 10, 15 years, that's what the biggest, you know, online retailers, of course. But I think that's one of the biggest sort of changes of these out-of-town retail parks that kind of have identikit stores of certain sizes that shops like because it's easier to load in and out goods and people like the free parking and they can go and get lunch there and whatever.

26:33Georgie Frost: And if people like that and that's shifting habits, what can you do about it? As a shop on the main high street, probably join them.

26:42Lee Boyce: Yeah, quite. All right, Lee, we're going to stick with the high street. Let's have a little chat about banking hubs, shall we? Because you've got a story about Acton, banking hubs, Barclays. What's all this about? What are banking hubs?

26:53Georgie Frost: So banking hubs have been kind of filling the gap where last branches in town have been disappearing across Britain. Well documented, thousands of branches have disappeared from major banks over the last 10, 15 years. It's citing the change towards us doing our banking online or on apps. But they can absolutely decimate a local community. Lots of small businesses for sure will use bank branches. and there's still millions of people out there that like to use cash over any other method of payment whether that's the budget whether that's because you know they're kind of more vulnerable um there's all sorts of reasons um and this um these banking hubs have been funded by cash access uk which in turn is funded by uh most major banks so major banks are involved in this and the banking hubs exist in a kind of like it's a co-sharing space so banks have a member of staff typically you'll have Barclays on a Monday, Lloyds on a Tuesday, HSBC on a Wednesday.

27:51Georgie Frost: It's a bit like a Craig Davidson. But you can still have face-to-face banking, but you can still go in and withdraw money and do certain transactions. And they've been a relative success. And actually, the first banking hub that opened was in Rochford in Essex, which is where I grew up. I've never been in there because I've not really been back to Rochford since I grew up there. But that's when I opened the first one and it's just celebrated its five-year anniversary and there's now 236 banking hubs across the country it's going to hit 250 by the end of the year and I was quite shocked to realize that Barclays now has just 206 branches across Britain that is a very small actually recently it was hinting at reopening some branches so maybe it's gone too much too quickly and people do like that face-to-face interaction yeah okay you might not use your bank that often but it is nice to know that you have got a bank branch around I think and it does help keep the high street alive and some of them are adapting in ways in which to kind of keep them more viable and more attractive for example Santander has these work cafes there's one in Kensington where you can go in it's like a coffee shop mixed with a bank I think ideas like that kind of work and it's good to try and keep banking presence around I think we're at the I'm sure we're at the bottom now i can't imagine many more bank branches going to go from here because all i hear from people was this bank branch is shut down i'm going to go to nationwide for example nationwide has been a big success the latest current accounts which in figures show and i and it has actively cited the fact that it's vowed to keep almost 700 branches open uh until the end of the decade as a big reason for that because people still want to know that they've got a bank branch if they need it.

29:35Georgie Frost: And the banking hub, so the exclusive stats that were given to me was seven in 10 Britons now know what a banking hub is. 167 transactions take place every day across each banking hub. Acton is the busiest with 450 transactions per day. That's quite a lot. That's 95 % of customers' cash and banking needs were met in a banking hub. And they've been deemed positive. Nine in 10 customers would recommend their local ones. Last year, there were more than 2 million withdrawals in them. there was almost 350 ,000 business deposits in these banking hubs. So they are still, they're filling that gap. They're crucial for the community.

30:10Georgie Frost: I think it's still crucial to have a banking presence. And I think it's interesting how it's going. There's a big list here. I'm not going to read all of this list out, but there's a list of where they're targeting next. And you can find it on our website. If you just go and search in the bar banking hubs, you'll be able to find it. But at least there is still a presence. I still think it would have more bank branches of individual banks, but I guess this is the next best thing.

30:34Lee Boyce: I love the idea, though, of a banking sort of workspace slash coffee shop thing, because just for the fact of, you know, you can do little brochures about, you know, everything you need to know about mortgages. It could be like a really good way to sort of get the conversation about money going. In a world where we're trying to get people educated and confident about talking about money, they could really ham that up, you know.

30:55Georgie Frost: I'm a fan of them the one in Kensington is always busy there's lots of people with laptops in there doing work you don't have to be a Santander customer but if you are, you get a discount on the coffee it makes sense doesn't it you know, we can bemoan coffees then we can save£5 coffees and whatever but if you can go into the Santander branch and as you say, have an open conversation about money or do the transactions that you need and start for a coffee or two coffees where you get some work done or whatever you know, you can see how that can then help keep that bank branch alive, profitable and worthwhile having.

31:30Georgie Frost: So yeah, I think it's a good thing.

31:31Lee Boyce: Little networking events, you know, pension workshops, I don't know, whatever. Anyway, moving on. We've heard of making money from your home and even from your driveway, but what about your garden? More and more homeowners, it seems, are selling slices of their land to develop for six-figure sums. But experts warn these deals can come with hidden risks from undervaluing land to legal complications and tax bills. Helen, I don't have a garden that would sell very much. I mean, it's about the size of a postage stamp. But if I were fortunate enough to have a very large garden, why and how would I consider selling off a chunk of it?

32:16Helen Crane: It sounds like quite a tempting offer, doesn't it? £150 ,000 for a slice of your garden that you don't really use or care about and I mean look there's some people that would never dream of giving up part of their garden but I think for some people you know let's be honest we probably only get two months of the year in the UK when you can really spend any substantial time in your garden if we're lucky um I've recently got garden for the first time and I find I absolutely love it during the summer but the rest of the year it's just like sort of sitting there and looking out the window at it and thinking oh that's all right and so this is yeah this is interesting so it's basically we've got an article about this on the website and um our reporter jane denton has spoken to a man who lives in a four-bed house in arnest grove uh in north london he had a 270 square meter garden so that's big that's larger than a tennis court and he was getting old he was kind of finding it difficult to maintain um then one day he gets a knock on the door from a property developer offering to buy part of it for that princely sum of£150 ,000.

33:23Helen Crane: So that's for 200 square metres of his garden. So he is giving up the majority of it. But for him, he said he'd been struggling to keep up his mortgage repayments. They'd gone up in the last few months with all the rate rises and he could basically use that money to pay off the rest of his mortgage. So it sounds great for someone who doesn't use their garden, could do with the money. However, as with any of these things there are so many uh sort of uh red flags to to be aware of and i mean first of all that it could really really annoy your neighbors uh you know you have to think about if you're because because the reason they uh developers want to buy these is to build a house right and they normally want to build something uh quite big because they obviously want to get the most for the money that they've spent on on buying this uh plot of land so you You know, you might lose light from your house.

34:13Helen Crane: Your neighbours might lose light from their house or their gardens. You know, they might just be annoyed about another car being parked on the street or, you know, more, yeah, more and more kind of people being around. So do definitely think about it really carefully. And obviously, this is the kind of thing that developers want areas that are usually in kind of sort of smart areas or in cities, you know, where land is a premium. So if you live somewhere else, you might not kind of get as much for it. You do want to make sure as well that you're getting a good price for it. So we spoke to an estate agent and he said if you do get approached by a developer, it's a really good idea to get the land valued independently yourself to check that the price they're offering is a reasonable price.

35:00Helen Crane: Because, you know,£150 ,000 sounds like loads and loads of money. But actually, you know, if you live in a high value area, what are they going to be able to sell on that house for? you know it could be millions so I think it's really important to get someone independent in to say yeah that that offer kind of makes sense and and you're not sort of getting ripped off it's really important to look at the uh the sort of legal side of things as well so you'll need to obviously uh sign a contract when you sell this land and um sometimes there's sort of restrictions that maybe if the developer doesn't get planning permission then they'll sort of take the money

35:34Georgie Frost: back.

35:34Helen Crane: Yeah, there's a lot of kind of get out clauses in these sort of agreements, because obviously property development is so uncertain. So you want to get a lawyer to look over anything you've been asked to sign and things like that. Also, you know, you might be by selling, you might be giving up other kind of rights. So you need to think about things like access, service connections, sewers, all kind of very boring sounding things. But really important if you're considering letting someone build a house at the bottom of your garden.

36:00Lee Boyce: Yeah, this is actually quite close to home, quite literally close to home, my mum's next door neighbour sold a chunk of their land off and my poor mother, bless her, she is absolutely beside herself, bless her, about it because she's just, you know, fearing the absolute worst because they sold off a chunk of land but it's to a developer that could build anything and what I would say is I don't think it's an easy process to go through if you are the person selling off the land because a lot of people put in protest about it. I don't know how it got overturned, but it did. I think because there's a lot more pressure on councils to agree to building houses in certain areas.

36:39Lee Boyce: But I think a lot of, this is not the case with my mum's house, it's not worth this, but I think a lot of big houses are fearful of this mansion tax. And so they're selling off a chunk of their land to get underneath that. And there's also inheritance tax reasons, whatever. But trust me, it ain't good for the neighbours. Neighbourly love is sort of a bit in short supply, Lee.

36:59Georgie Frost: you've hit the nail on the head though there georgie because there's so much pressure you know first these to get the get homes built but also the mansion tax thing is shifting habits if you're going to do this though you've got to be careful because if you sell a patch of land say for 100 grand or 150 grand and then that devalues your home by x amount you're basically wiping out what you have sold that patch of land for because your home is not as attractive as it was when it had a better garden and actually it's close to home as well because it happened to my in-laws and the house next door uh was sold off to a developer and the developer then put in two two houses in the back garden planning permission despite all of the cul-de-sac you know getting together and saying this ain't on they went ahead and did it and there's two houses are there now and the house next door and then the developer had the gall to knock on their house and ask to buy some of their garden because the gardens that these put these two houses on are like postage stamps they're absolutely tiny so they've got these massive nice new looking homes but the gardens do not match the size of the home so they look a little bit ridiculous now lo and behold here we are the houses the homes have been finished i think they've been on the market for more than six months and they're all still up for sale probably because the gardens aren't big enough but it's a hot topic people are tempted into doing it but it really does require so much thought and you've got to be really careful

38:30Lee Boyce: yes you do right, talking about stories that are close to home last week, fed up as I was Lee, of always losing the charger to my Garmin I basically have a Garmin on one wrist and a Whoop on the other tell me what's the point of a Whoop, I don't see the point of it but I got gifted it so I feel bad not to wear it. It's not on. It's not charged. I don't know where the charger is. So anyway, I was so fed up. I strolled into the local jewellers and I bought myself a watch. A proper one. One that you have to wind back. Like, you know, next time I travel abroad. I have to say, I resisted. They did get out the£3 ,000 Cartier watch.

39:06Lee Boyce: Quite frankly, Lee, if I have£3 ,000 to spank on anything, it would not be a watch. I got myself, I think it's about£250. It's a Citizen EcoDrive. I didn't realise it's actually a gent's watch. I only saw it on the receipt, but it doesn't matter, right? I like it. It's all right. Anyway, it's functional, right? But I do know, what I do know, is that people do love their watches. And some of them go for silly amounts. Now, Lee, I wasn't quite sure how silly until I read your article. This is silly, silly, silly money. Six watches to invest in that experts say will become a classic. Before we get to that, are you a watchman, Lee?

39:41Georgie Frost: George, I'm exactly the same as you, really. I had Fitbit probably up to a couple of years ago. And then I realized how depressed they were making me. I didn't want to know how many steps I was doing, really. I didn't want to know.

39:52Lee Boyce: How little sleep I'm getting.

39:54Georgie Frost: Yeah, I don't need to know that I'm only sleeping a few hours a night and all that kind of thing. And I just started to not enjoy it whatsoever. And I felt like a bit of a slave to the Fitbit. And I love walking. I do so much walking anyway. I don't really need to know how many steps I've done and all that. if I've gone for a nice 45 minute lunchtime walk I know I've gone for a nice 45 minute lunchtime walk I don't need to log it I don't need another app I don't need any of that and like you I started to get more wanting to have a wristwatch and the reason for that is because I was fed up of getting my phone and then checking the time and then the phone's sucking me in because I've looked at the time on the phone and then it's almost like a comfort blanket of then getting on the phone and mucking around with it and I don't want to do that anymore so yeah I started getting into watches a little bit more i would never pay the sort of massive sums that are on on show here but um i do treat myself every year to a brand new swatch i'm a big fan of a swatch i think that they are a really good like you know cheapish brand that aren't you know you're not going to break the bank on i've got a nice colorful one here for you now georgie look at this look at that you know

40:59Lee Boyce: that's nice bought one sour in a department store um i was happy with that but i um i actually last

41:06Georgie Frost: november queued at the swatch store in westfield because i'd seen this moon swatch so moon swatch is a tie-up with amiga so there's swatch and amiga it's like a crossover thing and it was a really really really nice uh it's called um the snoopy moonshine gold beaver moon watch which is quite a mouthful 335 pounds it has a dial to show which moon phase we're in and another to show how the earth looks from the moon which is a bit you know but i quite like it yeah yeah really nice blue and white looks really nice 335 quid you know it's not cheap but it's not incredibly expensive but actually i was looking at prices so six months later on ebay and boxed they're selling for sort of 550 to 650 pounds because they're quite limited edition to go and have to queue to go and get them and all that kind of stuff and actually i was on a trip at the start of the year and this guy had a really fancy rolex on very expensive rolex and he at the on the last day he asked to have a look at my watch so i sort of showed him and he was like that's really really nice i think i want to get me one of them and he was like a serious watch collector he was like i want to get me one of them so i thought you know what i'm justified in my purchase here i like it uh yeah yeah flexing my 335 pound swatch against his 50k rolex yeah lovely but one of the big problems with rolex They're very beautifully made, obviously very expensive.

42:30Georgie Frost: And most people would associate Rolex as having made it. Do you know what I mean? It's one of those kind of watches where you might try and save up for one when you turn 40 or something like that. It might be like a bit of a bucket list item.

42:43Lee Boyce: Do you think, Lee? I sort of think it's a bit Burberry now. It's sort of gone a bit... If you want to get a nice one, Patak or Tag Hoods is quite nice.

42:50Georgie Frost: I still think Rolex is what people naturally think of. I do.

42:53Lee Boyce: Look at me, never being able to afford a Rolex or anything, or never wanting to either, going, oh, Rolex is cheap, it's tacky.

43:00Georgie Frost: Even if you could, I don't think I would, because I'd just be worried about scratching it. I'd be worried about getting nicked. I'd be worried about looking too fat, like Flash. You know, I think that's what a lot of people do feel like. You know, I don't want to come across like I've got loads of money. You know, I don't want to be a walking target. And I think that's how people do feel at the moment. No one's coming to come and steal my couple hundred quid swatch off my wrist, you know, and that's the thing. But for a reason, Rolex is the most counterfeited watch brand in the world. You only have to go to some mean streets.

43:29Georgie Frost: The back streets of Seville, for example. And you'll probably, you know, you can easily find the fake Rolexes, which is, you know, not great. And it's kind of hard to, you know, some of these forgeries these days are so, so damn good that it's hard to tell. Anyway, I'm going to give you the sixth list on here because time's cracking on. So Toby Warren did a story here about six watches that aren't Rolexes that could be worth future classics almost. So the first pick here and the starting price, Hamilton Kaki Field Mechanical T50, which is£595. It's been described as the hottest entry level watch by fashion magazine GQ.

44:09Georgie Frost: There's a special edition T50 released this year and a limited number of 1 ,776 pieces. you want to have a look around there and you can see you know on the website what are the versions and and whatnot on there the next one is a i'm just going to call it a sin watch sin 308 hunting watch uh again gq believes that it might have just come up with the next fashionable watch um starting price that one to 2200 pounds so we're starting to get into a little bit more pricey territory here um quite a complicated looking watch um hard to describe without going on our website and taking a look at it but please do go and you'll you'll find the story on there next one is a Cartier Ballon Blue£5 ,900 this is more for um for women but Prince William bought this one for Catherine for their third wedding anniversary in 2014 that endorsement helped bring it into sort of more kind of eyeballs and become more popular the next one on the list is Suspeak Antarctic Passage de Drake Glatia Blue,£24 ,000.

45:13Georgie Frost: Now we're getting up to, sorry if I pronounced that completely incorrectly. But this is a brand that was revived. It was founded in 1845, vanished in 1869, revived in 2015 by three entrepreneurs. And they are focusing on quality rather than on how many timepieces they can sell, which is a massive point in this when you're looking for a watch to potentially invest in. And the Patek is next. An annual Canada watch,£54 ,000. Not my cup of tea, it must be said, looking at the watch. But prices of some examples are up 18 % in a year. And very finally, we have a Grubal 40 handmade one. Are you bracing yourself here, Georgie?

45:59Georgie Frost: £725 ,000. It is worn on the wrist of Mark Zuckerberg. That's a reason not to have it, isn't it? Each watch takes 6 ,000 hours to make. It produces just two or three of these ultra rare timepieces a year. They're very, very, very, very, very, very unlikely that anyone listening on this podcast is ever going to get one of these watches. If you do have one, please let me know. But I tell you what I do like, Georgia, I do like getting my watch. And I do also like looking at local auctions because you can actually snag some really good bargains at local auctions. I use Saurum and that's a kind of, it links up all auction rooms across the country and there's a couple of auction houses that are close to my house and they quite often have watches on there and they and they have some really cool and really nice vintage watches including rolex but they do do some some other makes um that are really nice and worth looking out for if you're looking for something a bit vintage or something a little bit different a very good place to take a look but fundamentally if you're tempted into buying a watch for investment purposes just make sure you buy something you like the look of and yeah and that's why i think you should always treat anything like this as long as you like the look of it and you're happy with it and you don't expect it to grow in

47:09Lee Boyce: value then you're golden lee's tip of the week and you can't use the one you've just used there lee

47:16Georgie Frost: my tip of the week is if you're looking to sell your home at the moment and you've got gnomes make sure those gnomes are tucked away somewhere because there was some data out this week suggesting that a good well-maintained garden and practical garden adds five to twenty percent of value to a home which could be quite a bit but one thing i'm gonna say i'm gonna say this word georgian i'm really really sorry but one thing that gives potential buyers the ick and i'm saying the word the ick on the podcast and i can't believe i've just done it but i've done it now yeah is is garden gnomes uh 40 percent of people actively despise garden gnomes and it might potentially possible bias in it seeing gnomes dotted around the home i have got absolutely no idea what the hatred is for gnomes i don't like gnomes but if they add some character and personality to your home and you like them it's up to you but just make sure if you're sending

48:11Lee Boyce: your home tuck those gnomes away gnomes don't sell homes nice my dad's been trying to sell his home for ages that's it he's got two gnomes in the front yard i'll get him to get rid of the names and he'll sell it next all right lee thank you very much thank you very much helen and thank you for listening of course you can keep up today with all the latest breaking money news just go to this is money.co.uk or you can download the app and if you have any comments or questions

48:33Georgie Frost: the team or anything you'd like them to look into lee you can email us at podcast at this is money.co.uk you can leave a comment on where this podcast lives and you can also leave comments on youtube on spotify and all of those kind of places as well and we read them all we do we read We read everything that comes in, though, I promise you. So please do get in touch. If you've got a gnome you love or a watch brand you think is the hottest thing, come and tell us. We love to hear from you all.

48:59Lee Boyce: And just a reminder, if you want to catch a little bit more of me and Simon, you can go to Investing Unlock UK on YouTube or on all podcast platforms for our new show all about investing. And this week, we're talking about the changes to the pension bill and what it means for your money. And next week, we're looking at property. whether there's any money to be made in property investing.