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British Land might be reporting today that its retail portfolio is at full capacity but step inside those shops and the atmosphere is more sombre.
The British Retail Consortium said this morning that retail sales had the worst January for 15 years hit by the triple whammy of cold weather, rising VAT and retailers deciding against aggressive discounting.
They are not the only ones. You can see from Synovate's weathermap that drilling down to regional level fails to brighten that picture.
When the figures came out just after Christmas there was some hope things would perk up. But Synovate reckon it's actually been the worst January for half a decade. Overall retail is down 5% on January last year and a whopping 27.5% on December.
The outlook this month is for further slippage and Synovate reckons we'll see another 6% drop by the end of February with Northern England (-1.6%) and London & the South East worst (1.5%) hit.
There is a bit of cheery news - if it can be called that. The group had been predicting Scotland and Northern Ireland would suffer a 5% slip in January. It turns out that it only dipped by 2.7% and is now predicted to put in the 'best' performance in the UK with nearly 3% growth.
Tomorrow the British Property Federation report its own figures. It's probably too much to hope for good news.
British Land might be reporting today that its retail portfolio is at full capacity but step inside those shops and the atmosphere is more sombre.
The British Retail Consortium said this morning that retail sales had the worst January for 15 years hit by the triple whammy of cold weather, rising VAT and retailers deciding against aggressive discounting.
They are not the only ones. You can see from Synovate's weathermap that drilling down to regional level fails to brighten that picture.
When the figures came out just after Christmas there was some hope things would perk up. But Synovate reckon it's actually been the worst January for half a decade. Overall retail is down 5% on January last year and a whopping 27.5% on December.
The outlook this month is for further slippage and Synovate reckons we'll see another 6% drop by the end of February with Northern England (-1.6%) and London & the South East worst (1.5%) hit.
There is a bit of cheery news - if it can be called that. The group had been predicting Scotland and Northern Ireland would suffer a 5% slip in January. It turns out that it only dipped by 2.7% and is now predicted to put in the 'best' performance in the UK with nearly 3% growth.
Tomorrow the British Property Federation report its own figures. It's probably too much to hope for good news.
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