Legislation for cheaper electricity bills for Portugal’s poorest families seems at last to be biting as energy suppliers to the Algarve’s households now have to provide 24,138 customers with the ‘social tariff.’

Economically vulnerable consumers are automatically allowed to benefit from the low-cost electricity rates and also cheaper gas supplies as long as their income is €5,808 or less or the householders are on defined social benefits.

Uber was declared legal in April this year after transport and taxi unions failed to get the company stopped in its tracks.

The government u-turn included the setting up of a working party to look at how Uber and other app-based transport companies such as Cabify could be included in existing legislation or whether new rules needed to be set.

Consumers can be faced with incomplete, misleading timeshare contracts which they have been pressured into signing - consumer watchdog DECO reminds people that under Portuguese law these contracts may be cancelled within 14 days without any charges being made.

The summer holiday period is the prime time for timeshare salespeople to lure people with offers and discounts and, enticed by often aggressive marketing campaigns and the offer of free weekends in tourist resorts, many consumers end up signing contracts that they have not read of fully considered.

Banco Espírito Santo collapsed two years ago and supposedly was ‘rescued’ by the bank of Portugal’s decision to split the bank into two. One part retained all the toxic assets of the old BES and continued to be called BES.

The seemingly good parts of BES were put into a new company and the bank continued to operate, but as Novo Banco, with new fascias and paperwork duly altered at no little expense.

David Thomas, the founder of Safe Communities Algarve, received a British Empire Medal* from the British Ambassador to Portugal, Kirsty Hayes, for his voluntary work with the Algarve’s international population in working with local security forces to reduce crime.

The event at the Ambassador’s Residence in Lisbon was attended by representatives of many of the agencies David Thomas works with, including the GNR, PSP, SEF, PJ, the National Civil Protection Authority, AMAL and the Algarve Tourism authority.

José Amarelinho, the socialist president of Aljezur council in the western Algarve and vice president of the Association of the Algarve’s Municipalities (AMAL), has been interviewed by Luísa Oliveira for Visão on the red hot topic of oil exploration in the Algarve’s oceans and onshore.

Amarelinho says the region’s mayors are united in their opposition to government plans to turn the region into an oil and gas producing economy and says he and his mayoral colleagues will not stop until the concession contracts have been torn up.

The Tax Authority and the Maritime Police are cooperating in a clamp down on illegal, beach-related tax evasion in the Algarve.

The “pé na areia” (foot in the sand) operation aims to ‘monitor summer activities,’ according to the latest press release, to deter those operating in and near the region’s beaches without the necessary paperwork.

A government working group looking at the private rental market has not, as one would expect, suggested changes to the current Alojamento Local legislation to corral those outside the tax net, but has come up with several proposals to limit the number of rental properties and make life financially harder for those letting their properties to tourists.

The Housing Policy Working Group (Políticas de Habitação, Crédito Imobiliário e Tributação do Património Imobiliário) wants to limit the number of properties on short-term tourist lets and insists that a percentage is released to the long-term rental market.