Thursday newspaper round-up: Rail fares, Ocado, British Airways

(Sharecast News) - Britain's top-listed businesses have made further progress on gender targets but still have too few women in senior leadership positions, a report has found. The research, by Cranfield School of Management, found the proportion of women on FTSE 100 boards was at an all-time high, but concluded there still were not enough female chairs, chief executives and chief financial officers. - Guardian Millions of commuters are facing a double-digit percentage rise in their rail fares over the next two years as financial markets predicted a jump in inflation lasting well into 2022. Investors are bracing for the Retail Price Index (RPI), which is used to calculate fare increases, to peak at 7pc by April next year and remain at 6.2pc in July - the month in which the figure is used to calculate increases in ticket prices and student loan interest costs. - Telegraph

Households face a £220 increase to their council tax bills over the next three years as local authorities plug a £3bn blackhole in their finances, a leading think tank has warned. The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) said council taxes could need to rise by 5pc per year, with Boris Johnson's recent social care reforms posing "major challenges" for local authority budgets. - Telegraph

Ocado is investing £10 million in the driverless car start-up Wayve as part of a year-long trial that could result in autonomous grocery deliveries. Ocado uses robots in its warehouse to pick customer orders from a grid-like system but the Wayve deal could pave the way for robots to deliver groceries to peoples' homes. - The Times

British Airways plans to rehire some of the thousands of staff laid off last year. Unite, the union, says the airline is looking to rehire about 3,000 cabin crew after cutting roughly 10,000 jobs, a third of its workforce, last spring and summer when the Covid-19 crisis had grounded most of its aircraft. BA did not confirm how many staff would be taken back, but it has begun offering new cabin crew jobs from next summer, according to the Financial Times. - The Times