Despite six weeks of relaxed Sunday trading hours, retailers do not seem to be as keen as the Government to keep the extended opening hours now that the Olympic Games have finished.
The relaxation of the law was designed to help gift shops at the Olympic Park and support retailers across Britain, whilst giving a much-needed boost to the UK economy, leading the Government to propose the idea of keeping the rules as they have been recently.
However, figures released by the BRC last week show that retail sales actually fell by 0.4 percent in August on a year-on-year basis, leading Stephen Robertson, Director General of the BRC, to say: “There’s no evidence here of any Olympic boost to retail sales overall.
“Sadly, apart from April – distorted by Easter timings – August saw the worst sales growth this year”.
The British Retail Consortium (BRC) have also announced that it will not lobby to keep the hours on behalf of its members but will allow individual members to press for changes if they wish to do so.
One supermarket, Wm Morrison, which is the UK’s fourth largest chain, is set to lobby for an hour or two extra on a Sunday, but only because its Chief Executive, Dalton Philips, calls the current rules “confusing”.
Mr Philips would also like to see the rules relaxed for certain other days of the year, such as Christmas Eve.
However, the Chief Executive of Sainsbury’s, Justin King, has opposed a permanent lift in Sunday trading restrictions, whilst Tesco have also spoken out against the proposed changes, saying that customers already have a “large and growing choice about when and how they shop.”