A SENIOR UK retail chief has urged governments on both sides of Border to resist increasing the regulatory burden on the industry, as the key festive period approaches.

Kris Hamer, director of insight at the British Retail Consortium (BRC), called for support on business rates from the administrations at Holyrood and Westminster, as the UK Government prepares to announce its Autumn Statement later this month, and the Scottish Government gets set to unveil its Budget in December.

The comments from the industry veteran came as the sector continues to deal with the impact of high inflation, which has seen consumers become more circumspect over how they spend their discretionary income, and the rise in the cost of goods, partly driven by Russia’s war on Ukraine.

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Shops have also come under pressure from rising retail crime and, in recent weeks, poor weather, with footfall dropping sharply in October because of prolonged spells of stormy weather.

Mr Hamer, who over a 25-year career has worked in insight and operational changes roles with retailers such as Asda and SSP Group, said the industry is calling for freezes in both the poundage rate in Scotland and the multiplier in England and Wales, which are respectively used to calculate business bills north and south of the Border.

He told The Herald: “In the absence of looking at business rates reform, at the very least we just don’t need to add any additional cost at this point to many businesses which are trying to balance the books.”

Mr Hamer cited the flawed introduction of a deposit return scheme in Scotland as he underlined the importance of government working with businesses when they are asked to introduce new regulations. This is to ensure that any new legislation is “sustainable” and “actually delivers against the goals the government is seeking to implement”, he said.

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In Scotland, this point is being addressed New Deal for Business Group set up by First Minister Humza Yousaf shortly after he succeeded Nicola Sturgeon in March.

David Lonsdale, director of the Scottish Retail Consortium and a member of the group, said the organisation is “very supportive of the thrust of the New Deal for Business” and the “principles that underpin” it.

He said: “We are hugely heartened by the First Minister’s agenda on this, but the hoary old phrase “the proof of the pudding will be in the eating” very much comes to mind.

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"The Programme for Government he unveiled was encouraging and relatively light on new regulatory initiatives. But we have a new Scottish Government Budget and the Chancellor’s Autumn Statement coming up in the next few weeks… and part of that will be the big business rates question, whether they act on that both at a UK or Scottish level. But in terms of the New Deal for Business, [there have been] encouraging first steps.”

On general trading, Mr Hamer said that growth in the retail sector has been in “low single digits” this year, with volumes in decline against a backdrop of high inflation.

He hopes that an expected fall in inflation in the months ahead will “ultimately lead to better consumer confidence”. But he added: “We are not out of the woods in terms of the costs that households are facing, particularly those with mortgages and those that rent. [The] relative indebtedness of households means there is ultimately less money for them to spend. Consumers are still making choices about discretionary and non-discretionary spend.”

Figures published by the SRC on Friday showed that the recent storms had hammered shopper footfall in Scotland. Scottish footfall decreased by 5.5% year-on-year in October, 6.5 percentage points worse than September. However, this was better than the UK average decrease of 5.7% year-on-year.

Shopping centre footfall decreased by 2.7% in October in Scotland, the SRC found, 6.4 percentage points worse than September.

Mr Hamer said Scotland has generally been performing better than the UK as a whole in terms of footfall, which he said was partly because housing costs were not as high as they are in regions such as the south-east of England.

But he said that while people were spending time on the high street, it was not necessarily translating into purchases from shops.