Construction Industry Scheme returns for the period from 6 December 2016 to 5 January 2017 should be submitted online by 19 January. This includes NIL returns.

It is too easy to forget the need to submit a NIL return when no payments to subcontractors have been made. If you engage a firm of local accountants to do your CIS returns, then this will be taken care of. In our case we keep a diary and do a batch of work at about the same time each month.

 
A new design of pound coin is to be issued from 28 March this year. This will be twelve-sided like the old threepenny bit, although a smaller silver version will not be issued as well (there was once a small silver threepence coin which still appears in Maundy money and is still therefore legal tender for three new pence). The new coin will have a number of features to make it harder for forgers to copy it. It will be interesting to see what happens to these features when the coin becomes worn. Nickel-brass coins tend to wear quickly, and frankly they look horrible when they do become worn.

The existing round pound coin will be demonetised from 16 October 2017. You won’t be able to use it to go shopping after that date, or in slot machines. Many banks will probably still allow you to pay in the old pound after that date, on past experience, but it may be best to take no chances.

A new 50p coin featuring Sir Isaac Newton will also appear. Sir Isaac was Warden and then Master of the Royal Mint, and supervised the great recoinage of 1696. Prior to 1662, coins were hammered out by hand. After 1662 they were produced by machines, also called mills. In the 1690s a push was made to replace all the old hammered coins in circulation by the new milled coinage, which Sir Isaac was responsible for supervising. He is remembered with affection by accountants. This is the same person who is commemorated in Newton’s Laws in dynamics, Newton’s Rings in optics, and has a unit of force named after him.

 
The Government has announced a new garden village to be built in the St Cuthberts area to the south of Carlisle. The News and Star reports that this will be between M6 junction 42 (Carlisle South) and the A595 (the road to Workington and Whitehaven).

So just where is this? My 1:25000 Ordnance Survey Map shows the St Cuthbert Without Civil Parish as lying to the south of Carlisle, and a search on Google Maps shows that it includes the villages of Durdar, Brisco, Burthwaite and Wreay. Narrowing things down, we can say somewhere west of the M6, east of the River Caldew and in the countryside to the south of Carlisle.

One benefit of this might be a decent Southern Bypass Road for Carlisle. Another benefit for us accountants is likely to be more clients, so why complain?  Well Carlisle has plenty of space to grow, but it depends on how you feel about this. I often whinge about the cart track that links us to Newcastle upon Tyne, but my family reply by saying what it is like down the South of England.