Newington's Antonia Norman looks at the key winners and losers from the Chancellor's Budget announcements.

Unlike his predecessor, George Osborne, who typically relished using major set piece events such as the Budget to score political points, this Chancellor has often been accused of political naivety. However this autumn, constrained by challenging public finances, and a wafer thin majority in the House of Commons, Philip Hammond had very little alternative but to deliver a more politically sensitive Budget.

His decisions, therefore, about who to reward and who to penalise can be viewed with this in mind – it was a Budget with a focus on popular policies and causes that enjoy widespread support in the party and the country such as helping young people, bolstering house building and supporting the NHS. Some of the major policy winners and losers included….

Millennials

• Abolishing stamp duties for first time buyers purchasing properties up to £300,000 (and relief on first £300,000 of properties up to £500,000 in high price areas)
• Introducing a new railcard for 26 -30yr olds, giving a third off fares

Business

• Maintaining the threshold that small businesses pay VAT at £85,000, but consulting on whether it could be designed to better incentivise growth
• Transitioning business rate uprating from RPI to CPI in April 2018, two years earlier than planned
• Business rate revaluation taking place every three years, rather than the current five years
• Increasing the main R&D tax credit to 12%
• £500m investment in supporting the high tech economy through initiatives including artificial intelligence, 5G and full fibre broadband
• Committing an extra £3bn for Brexit preparations

Air quality and environment

• Higher road tax for those who buy new diesel cars (but not for vans) which do not meet modern standards, who will be levied at one band higher than those with petrol cars
• Proceeds of this will be used to pay for a £220m clean air fund
• Consulting on how the tax system can reduce waste of single use plastic items

Duties

• Freezing alcohol duty except for high-strength white ciders
• Freezing fuel duty

Housing

• £44bn to support the housing market over the next five years to meet the target of 300,000 new homes built a year
• Councils given power to charge 100% council tax premium on empty properties
• A review into the gap between planning permissions and housing starts, with the option of compulsory purchase of land banked by developers for financial reasons

Regions

• £1.7bn transport fund for city regions, to be spent by metro mayors
• Progressing the devolution agenda through a local industrial strategy with Manchester, a second devolution deal with in the West Midlands and a new devolution deal with North of the Tyne

Welfare

• £1.5bn package to address concerns about the delivery of Universal Credit

Schools and hospitals

• £2.8bn of extra funding for the NHS, £350m available immediately for this winter with the remainder phased until 2019-2020
• £10bn additional capital investment to make the NHS more resilient
• 8000 new computer science teachers recruited, tripling the existing number of teachers and costing £84m
• £40m to train maths teachers and a £600 Maths premium for schools, for every pupil who takes Maths A level or Core Maths