Retail industry
BHS buyer Dominic Chappell given six years for tax evasion
November 5, 2020Dominic Chappell has been sentenced to six years in jail for evading tax on the £2.2m income he received from his doomed takeover of BHS. The 53-year-old spent hundreds of thousands of pounds on luxury items, including a yacht, a holiday to the Bahamas, a Bentley car and some Beretta guns, instead of paying £600,000 […]
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Hamleys to cut more than a quarter of London staff
October 18, 2020Marston’s – 2,150 jobs15 October: Marston’s – the brewer which owns nearly 1,400 pubs, restaurants, cocktail bars and hotels across the UK – said it would cut 2,150 jobs due to fresh Covid restrictions. The company has more than 14,000 employees. Whitbread – 6,000 jobs22 September: Whitbread, which owns the Premier Inn, Beefeater and Brewers […]
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‘They have to think differently’ – shoppers on John Lewis’s new strategy
October 16, 2020Christmas is still nearly 10 weeks away but Ina Ukstina is standing in John Lewis’s Kingston upon Thames store clutching several strings of shiny tree decorations. “For the first time in my life I’m getting an artificial tree,” she says. “I’ve always had a real tree but have started to think about what happens afterwards, […]
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‘We’re going to miss the community’: Elephant and Castle shopping centre closes after 55 years
September 24, 2020After 55 years the final few traders were packing up their shops and stalls at the Elephant and Castle shopping centre in south London with mixed feelings about what the future might hold. “It’s time for a change, because really everything has to be different,” Luz Villamizar, a “60-something” trader said with tears in her […]
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John Lewis could convert almost half its Oxford Street store into offices
September 16, 2020John Lewis is working on plans for a massive reduction in the size of its London flagship store, converting entire floors into offices, as shoppers switch to buying online and the crisis on British high streets turns into a fight for survival amid the Covid pandemic. The staff-owned department store has applied for planning permission […]
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Government must do more to get public back into shops, say retailers
September 3, 2020Retailers have told Boris Johnson that his government must do more to persuade the public that it is safe to travel to work and shop or risk needless job losses and store closures, as data showed city centres suffering from a lack of office workers. The British Retail Consortium said its monthly survey of footfall […]
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Revive London’s West End with culture vouchers, urges thinktank
September 2, 2020Discount vouchers, outdoor performances and reduced rent for artist residencies are some of the measures being proposed to kickstart the economic recovery and stem job losses in London’s West End amid the coronavirus pandemic. The absence of international tourists and the slow return of office workers to their desks have led to stubbornly low footfall […]
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‘It’s the worst I’ve ever seen’: London’s West End struggles to bounce back
August 15, 2020Mid-August should be boom time for central London. The streets would usually bustle with shoppers, workers and tourists, looking to spend their cash in the West End’s shops, restaurants and leisure attractions. But not this year. Vast swathes of the capital’s streets that once hummed with traffic and pedestrians lie quiet. On Friday morning just […]
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Shopper numbers jump 31% as lockdown in England relaxed
June 1, 2020Shoppers rushed back to high streets and retail parks on Monday as the reopening of car showrooms, markets and some Ikea stores marked the easing of lockdown restrictions in England. The number of shoppers out and about jumped by 31% across all retail destinations by 5pm in England compared with last week’s bank holiday Monday, […]
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