Will London’s battered high streets get the Christmas boost they need?

After a grim year, retailers are panicking that shoppers aren't spending enough to help them survive January.

- By Jonathan Prynn

It is late Monday morning at John Lewis's flagship department store on Oxford Street.

The Christmas buildup is in full swing and the huge revamped beauty hall is so crowded you could cross it walking on the shoulders of the shoppers thronging around counters selling brands such as Charlotte Tilbury, Dior, Chanel and Trinny London. Outside, the pavements look as rammed as ever in the final frenzied run-up to the big day. But while all appears reassuringly manic, many retailers are concerned.

Christmas will deliver the usual sugar rush of spending but it comes after a worryingly slow autumn. That was in large part because of the deeply unhelpful late November timing of the Budget, which threw a wet blanket on consumer confidence all the way up from early September.

There is also growing concern about how shoppers will react next year in the bleak months after the festive season, having absorbed the main economic messages from the Budget: taxes will rise, growth will be slow and unemployment is likely to stay high.

Earlier this week latest figures from the British Retail Consortium revealed just how badly the retail sector — the capital's fourth biggest employer — was hit by the Budget being set for November 26, immediately before the key Black Friday weekend. The latest BRC-KPMG Retail Sales Monitor shows how pre-Budget “jitters” acted as a drag on spending with retail sales up only 1.4 per cent year on year in the four weeks from November 2 to November 29, well below the 12-month average of 2.5 per cent growth. As BRC chief executive Helen Dickinson put it, the long period of uncertainty “meant the month of Black Friday did not deliver as strongly as retailers had hoped or the economy needed’.