Sharon White: Departing John Lewis boss calls for ‘cross-party’ effort to fix ailing high streets
Dame Sharon White has said that the regeneration of British high street needs to be a “cross-party” effort between political teams as physical retail continues to lose out to its digital rival.
The improvement of the high streets could not be completed in “a five-year parliamentary cycle”, the outgoing boss of the John Lewis Partnership (JLP) told City A.M. at Policy Exchange event in Westminster.
“We need to look at everything from tax to transport. Our local communities, [where] physical retail plays a hugely important role, need to find a way to transition through Covid,” she said.
“You have to look at all factors which make high streets and local communities vibrant. We have to look at tiny things like whether there are car parks… parking challenges make an enormous impact on how vibrant high streets are.”
High streets across Britain have been suffering since the Covid pandemic drove shoppers out of physical stores and into their homes, where they could access a much wider product range at the click of a button.
Last month, White called on the government to launch a Royal Commission investigation into blighted high streets and how to revitalise them.
The 56-year-old former Ofcom boss, who just handed in her notice as the front woman of the chain, also said that department store John Lewis is now 60 per cent online and 40 percent physical.
John Lewis and its sister grocery brand Waitrose have been among the hardest hit retailers in both the pandemic and cost of living crisis, posting a series of harrowing losses over the last few months.
As more shoppers continue to stray from John Lewis, White has also been forced to push back her turnaround plan by two years, now completing in 2028.
White revealed her turnaround plan in late-2020 to grow the business profits to £400m in five years. But since then the business has continued to be hit hard by post-pandemic shopping habits and roaring inflation.
An uptick in shoplifting and violence towards shop workers has also been a key issue retailers, including White, have been rallying against.
White said that it was an issue which was on the “top of her mind” adding that all retailers are “singing from the same hymn sheet” in cries to pass a law which makes it an specific offence to attack or abuse a shop worker.
Retailers, including the boss of Tesco and Sharon White are currently calling for the government to create a specific law to protect shopworkers, with tougher sentences for offenders, similar to the 2021 Protection of Workers which was passed in Scotland.