John Lewis sets the bar for Christmas trading with healthy 2.3 per cent growth in festive week December 31, 2015 The high street can breathe a sigh of relief if bellwether John Lewis is anything to go by: sales at the department store during Christmas week were up a healthy 2.3 per cent on 2014. The retailer, which last year celebrated its 150th anniversary, posted sales of £129.2m in the week to 26 December. The shopping [...]
Steel crisis: Government urged to spend £400m on UK steel workers to support towns and families March 31, 2016 The government is facing calls to spend up to £400m to support the families and towns of steelworkers hit by Indian steel giant Tata's plans to sell its UK operations. The government has been under pressure to act since Tata announced the decision that it would be putting its UK operations up for sale early on Tuesday morning. Earlier today Prime [...]
Blood on the shop floor as warm weather means high street retailers suffer worst Christmas performance since 2008, BDO says January 8, 2016 Retailers hoping for a last minute Christmas sales rush were bitterly disappointed, as figures suggest it was the worst festive period since 2008. According to BDO’s monthly high street sales tracker, retailers suffered a 5.3 per cent drop in year-on-year sales for December – the worst monthly results in seven years. No retail sub-sector survived unscathed. Sales of [...]
The count is in: These are the retail winners and losers for Christmas 2015 (according to Hargreaves Lansdown) January 15, 2016 After a busy few days chock-full of Christmas retail results, we're finally beginning to get a sense of who the winners and losers of 2015's festive period might be. Yesterday, Tesco surprised investors with better-than-expected results, rounding off a solid performance among the UK's traditional supermarket sector – although Asda is still yet to report. Marks & [...]
Retail sales run out of steam in February despite half-term and Valentine’s Day boost March 8, 2016 RETAIL sales slowed in February after a strong start to the year that was boosted by the January sales. Like-for-like sales rose by 0.1 per cent last month compared with February in 2015, when they had increased 0.2 per cent, according to the British Retail Consortium (BRC) and KPMG’s monthly data released today. The February [...]
Music ban on the Tube, child-free restaurants and four-day working week: The 10 laws we most want to see introduced in 2016 December 29, 2015 Ban on being drunk in a pub, carrying a plank along a pavement or flying kites in the street. There are plenty of weird British laws that we suspect may not always be strictly enforced (not that we’ve ever seen anyone inebriated in a pub, of course). But what about laws that ought to exist, [...]
Tesco, Asda and Morrisons named Christmas losers by Kantar as Waitrose, the Co operative, Aldi and Lidl crowned the winners January 12, 2016 There was little Christmas cheer for the supermarket sector – but some individual grocers outperformed the wider market, Kantar Worldpanel said this morning. The sector as a whole fell 0.2 per cent in the 12 weeks to 3 January, with Asda dropping the furthest – consumer spend at the Walmart-owned retailer was down 3.5 per cent. Tesco [...]
Christmas gifts 2015: Hoverboards, drones and onesies top our list of holiday searches December 24, 2015 The last and biggest day of the Christmas shopping season is officially upon us now. If you haven't found anything yet, and starting to get antsy about what to get our loved ones – don't panic, you aren't alone. Christmas Eve is still the single busiest day to buy gifts, and as we’re increasingly using our [...]
How do your gift buying habits match up? Londoners are the laziest (and most Scrooge-like) Christmas shoppers December 22, 2015 Londoners are the laziest Christmas shoppers in the country – and the people spending the least on presents compared with other cities in the UK. Nearly a third of people in the capital will do their Christmas shopping (or browsing) during work hours, while 21 per cent would pay for someone to do their shopping [...]
Racing betting: Progressive Le Prezien to justify 800-mile round trip to Kelso March 3, 2016 Kelso's richest day’s racing has attracted some interesting runners to the Scottish Borders on Saturday with the most eye-catching being Paul Nicholls’ LE PREZIEN in the Grade Two Premier Kelso Hurdle (3.15pm). This is the first time that Nicholls has fielded a runner in this race and he doesn’t send his horses to Kelso for a [...]