Review 2m rule within a week or we let staff go, say hospitality firms
Boris Johnson is optimistic as high street reopens but retail industry warns it will be a long road to recovery
A DOWNING Street-led review of the two-metre social distancing rule must be completed by next week or hotels, bars and restaurants will start to sack tens of thousands of staff, industry leaders will warn ministers tomorrow.
Boris Johnson has ordered a review into Public Health England’s guidance after criticism from businesses and Tory MPS that it means companies are not economically viable.
No10 said yesterday that its review would be completed “within weeks”.
However, hospitality companies have warned that they will need to know the plans by Tuesday next week, when rent for the three months from July is due, in order to head off job losses.
Tens of thousands of “non-essential” shops are to open today, though Mr Johnson admitted on a visit to a shopping centre yesterday that he did not know whether the shoppers would “come in a flood or a trickle – I hope they will come in sensible numbers”.
The UK recorded its lowest daily death toll since before lockdown, with 36 recorded deaths yesterday, and Mr Johnson hinted that he wanted to see the two-metre distance reduced as the virus decreases.
He said: “As we get the numbers down so it becomes one in 1,000, one in 1,600 maybe even fewer, your chances of being two metres, one metre or even a foot away from someone who has the virus is going down statistically, so you start to build some more margin for manoeuvre.”
Representatives from the hospitality sector, who are hoping to reopen their businesses after July 4, will press their concerns in a meeting with Paul Scully, the high streets minister, and Simon Clarke, a local government minister, tomorrow. Kate Nicholls, the chief executive of UK Hospitality, said a third of hospitality businesses – 30,000 to 40,000 firms, employing one million people – could start redundancy processes next week if there was no clarity, particularly with the firms having to fund an increased proportion of the salaries of furloughed workers from the end of July.
She said: “Some of them will just go bust at that point … labour is the only element of their profit and loss account which is totally under their control.
“It is the first thing that goes if there is any cost.”
The findings of the No10 review will be reported to the Covid Strategy Committee, which is chaired by Mr Johnson. It will take advice from a range of experts, including Chief Medical Officer, Chief Scientific Adviser, behavioural scientists and economists. The inclusion of economists is seen as vital so that the interests of businesses can be set against warnings from scientists.
Rishi Sunak, the Chancellor, told the BBC that while the Government listened to the advice of scientific advisers, ministers “were elected to make decisions in this country; people should hold us responsible and accountable for those decisions”.
ONLY 20 per cent of shoppers are expected to go back to the high street as shops open today, retail bosses have predicted.
While non-essential retail shops are permitted to open, the industry does not believe people will immediately flock to the shops, as a large proportion are still too scared.
Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, has acknowledged that people may only “trickle” back to the high street, and urged those who do to follow social distancing and wash their hands.
Data from Europe shows that the lack of confidence is likely to be correct. In Germany, Italy and Spain, footfall on the high street spiked on the day restrictions were lifted but had declined again within a week, according to data from Shoppertrak and the British Retail Consortium (BRC).
It was yet to return to pre-crisis levels in any of those countries within the first two-and-a-half weeks.
Last week, data from accountants EY suggested that a large proportion of consumers would be too scared to go to the shops, with four in five saying they do not want to try on clothes in a store.
Jace Tyrrell, of the New West End Company, a trade body representing retailers in London’s West End, said that he does not expect footfall to return to more than 20 per cent of its precrisis levels for some time.
“It’s going to feel quite different coming into the West End,” he said. “We are hoping not to see too many sales signs, particularly not in the first few weeks, because we want to see a steady flow not a sudden rush. Of course, safety is the priority.”
Meanwhile, the BRC’S tracker, published today, showed that footfall in the UK decreased by 81.6 per cent in May because of the lockdown. Shopping centres saw the biggest fall year-onyear of 84.9 per cent, with retail parks declining by 55 per cent.
Helen Dickinson, chief executive of the BRC, said that garden centres and homeware shops reopening had helped things to recover slightly, but that based on other countries it is only expected to rise by 15 to 25 percentage points in the coming weeks.
Boris Johnson has said people should “shop with confidence” as they return to their favourite stores, amid fears the economy may not bounce back as quickly as ministers originally hoped.
Speaking outside Westfield shopping centre yesterday, he said he did not know whether to expect “a flood or a trickle” when the shops reopened but that he hoped people would return in “sensible” numbers.
“I am very optimistic about the opening up that is going to happen tomorrow,” he said. “I think people should shop and shop with confidence, but they should of course observe the rules on social distancing and do it as safely as possible.”
Sports Direct appeared to gain an advantage, with stores open across the country yesterday. Some shoppers said the retailer was only open for NHS staff. The business has advertised a 50 per cent discount for doctors and nurses from today.
While some said the shop should not have opened, the early start did not appear to breach rules. Hampshire police force confirmed it had cleared a local Sports Direct to open for NHS staff only from 11am until 3pm. Sports Direct has been contacted for comment.
Councils are tentatively reopening public lavatories across the country as people return to town centres.
‘Back to normal shopping tomorrow!” remarked my socially distanced neighbour in the supermarket queue yesterday. “See you tomorrow!” called the manager of my local charity shop as I walked home, arranging her window display for the first time in 12 weeks. “Absolutely!” I replied, not wanting to spoil their newfound retail enthusiasm on a sunny Sunday morning, brilliant with the hope of renewed normality. But in my mind there echoed the equivocal response of the browbeaten editor of Evelyn Waugh’s Scoop: “Up to a point.”
All my life, I have been a keen and accomplished shopper, following the formidable example of my mother. As a child I used to accompany her stately progress along our local high street, from fishmonger to butcher to grocer, learning important life lessons about good food and good shopkeepers. Later there came an education in retail therapy: at Madame Stuart of Canterbury I admired bolts of brocade and chiffon while my mother discussed evening dresses with Madame (implacably chic black dress, pincushion on an elastic band around her wrist).
There followed exotic trips to Way In, Harrods’s teen boutique, with lunch afterwards in the dim, rose-plush surroundings of the Dress Circle restaurant. Since then I have regarded shopping as a kind of discipline and, occasionally, a defiant gesture of hope.
Hours before my son was born, I bought a preposterous couture version of a leather biker jacket. “It will remind you,” said the shop assistant, understanding my need to remember the person I was before I became a mother. Almost 30 years later, moments before lockdown, I impulsebought an absurd pair of cream leather lace-up boots from M&S, sensing that I might never again shop in the same way.
The life of a freelance writer is both fortunate (no commuting; a welcome absence of chivvying memos) and lonely. It is a kind of self-imposed lockdown, to which shopping – IRL, rather than online – provides a welcome punctuation: the solid reality of ordinary things – potatoes, coffee, mustard – alongside the drama of everyday life. The Covid-driven revelation that shop staff are key workers, together with doctors and nurses, cleaners and carers, was not news to me. Before lockdown, there were days on which the only people I spoke to were my kind, knowledgeable and entertaining local shopkeepers.
Now shops are reopening and the Prime Minister has urged us to go out and spend. I long for nothing more than the old normal: my online experience has been miserable – fraught with the sedentary expectation and disappointment to which shopping used to be such a diverting and effective antidote. The easing points us in the direction of the old model, from the “revenge shopping” for expensive couture fripperies that followed China’s emergence from lockdown, to the hours-long queues at Ikea and B&Q. The human impulse to get new stuff, we may conclude, is indefatigable.
As for me, since high street shopping cautiously opened I have queued, briefly, at a garden centre for compost and herbs. I am accustomed to queuing at food shops (I take a book to read while I wait). As for “normal” shopping – I feel no impulse to go there: for now it feels too soon; too strange. But the habit is ingrained, so who knows what tomorrow may bring?