8th September 2026
Britain's retailers have delivered a message to Government which deserves rather more attention than it might initially receive.
The British Retail Consortium's new “Buy into Retail” manifesto contains ten demands aimed at creating more jobs, encouraging investment, reducing costs and helping Britain's high streets and town centres.
At first sight it might look like the familiar wish list of a powerful business lobby: lower taxes, fewer regulations and cheaper energy.
But there is a bigger issue underneath it.
Retail is one of the industries through which ordinary people experience the economy every day. When retailers struggle, the consequences are not confined to company balance sheets. Shops close, town centres lose footfall, young people lose entry-level jobs and consumers eventually face higher prices.
The BRC says the retail industry employs almost three million people directly, with a further 2.7 million employed through its supply chains. It also describes retail as Britain's most important route into employment, accounting for almost a quarter of youth employment.
That makes the industry's health a matter of economic policy rather than simply a matter for retailers and their shareholders.
The BRC's first concern is employment costs.
It says increases in employer National Insurance contributions and above-inflation increases in the National Living Wage have added £6.5 billion to retail costs over two years. At the same time, the organisation points to more than one million young people who are neither earning nor learning and says retail employment has fallen by 66,000 over the past year.
Its answer is controversial but straightforward: reduce employer National Insurance contributions for workers under 25 and retain the lower National Minimum Wage rate for 18-to-20-year-olds.
The argument is that if employing young people becomes cheaper, retailers will have a greater incentive to create entry-level jobs.
Critics will inevitably ask whether businesses should be receiving tax advantages simply because their employees are young. But there is a serious economic argument here. If the alternative is a young person remaining unemployed and dependent upon benefits, there may be a wider social and financial gain from encouraging employers to provide that first job.
The BRC also wants changes to employment-rights legislation and the Growth and Skills Levy. It argues that new employment rules should protect workers from exploitation without destroying the flexibility that makes part-time and entry-level retail jobs possible. It particularly proposes that guaranteed-hours protections should focus on genuinely exploitative arrangements, rather than treating every flexible contract in the same way.
This is part of a wider argument running through the manifesto: Government should consider the cumulative effect of its policies rather than examining every regulation in isolation.
That argument becomes particularly powerful when the BRC turns to business rates.
The organisation says retail taxes have increased by 20 per cent over the past two years and that retailers and hospitality businesses pay around 75 per cent of their profits in tax. It argues that British property taxes are more than twice the level of France and five times that of Germany, while retail is paying £1.8 billion more in business rates than two years ago.
Whether every comparison tells the complete story is open to debate. But the basic problem is difficult to ignore.
A shop occupying an expensive property can face substantial fixed costs even when sales are disappointing.
That can create a vicious circle.
High costs discourage investment. Reduced investment makes shops less attractive. Less attractive shops contribute to declining footfall. Declining footfall reduces sales, making the original fixed costs even harder to bear.
This is particularly relevant to the future of town centres.
Britain no longer has the same retail landscape it had 20 or 30 years ago. Online shopping has changed consumer behaviour. Shopping centres compete with retail parks. Supermarkets have expanded into areas once dominated by town-centre retailers. Leisure, restaurants and services have become increasingly important to the survival of urban centres.
The answer therefore cannot simply be to try to recreate the high street of the past.
But if town centres are going to be reinvented, retailers need to be able to invest.
That brings the BRC to another major concern: energy.
Retail is Britain's third-largest energy user, according to the organisation. Refrigeration, lighting, heating, transport and increasingly digital operations all consume large amounts of energy. The BRC says British electricity prices are almost 40 per cent higher than Ireland's and argues that government taxes and levies account for around two-thirds of a typical electricity bill.
This matters because retailers have only limited choices.
If energy costs rise, businesses can absorb the increase, reduce investment, cut employment or pass the cost on to consumers.
Ultimately, some combination of all four is likely.
The manifesto therefore calls for energy-relief schemes to be extended to retail and its supply chain, for renewable-energy policy costs to be moved from electricity bills into general taxation, and for changes to the way network charges are recovered.
Then there is crime.
The BRC says retailers are experiencing 1,600 incidents of violence and abuse every day, alongside 5.5 million thefts a year. It wants greater police presence, faster prosecutions for repeat offenders and a zero-tolerance approach.
This is more than a question of shoplifting losses.
A high street where shop workers fear violence and customers feel unsafe is a high street in trouble.
The manifesto also calls for faster planning decisions, easier changes of use and incentives to bring vacant premises back into productive use. That could become increasingly important as the traditional retail model changes.
An empty shop is not necessarily evidence that the town centre has failed permanently. It may represent an opportunity for housing, leisure, healthcare, offices, community facilities or a different type of retailer.
But getting from an empty unit to a productive one can take years if planning procedures are complicated and expensive.
The BRC also wants Government to address competition from overseas sellers, particularly low-value imports, arguing that British retailers should not face higher costs and regulations while international competitors can effectively operate under different rules. It wants progress on reducing trade friction with the European Union, including through a workable sanitary and phytosanitary agreement.
This is a particularly important point after Brexit.
Britain cannot simultaneously demand that domestic retailers meet extensive regulatory obligations while allowing overseas competitors to sell into the British market without bearing comparable costs.
Finally, the BRC attacks what it describes as overlapping regulation.
Its example is packaging, where retailers can face extended producer responsibility charges, plastic packaging tax and packaging recovery-note costs. The organisation estimates these three systems cost retailers £2 billion a year.
Perhaps its most interesting proposal is therefore the tenth: Government should join up its decisions so that new costs do not arrive simultaneously from different departments.
The BRC points to 2027, when retailers are expected to deal with the Employment Rights Act, a £2 billion deposit-return scheme, major product and labelling changes associated with the SPS agreement and new food-nutrition rules.
This is where the manifesto becomes more than a demand for lower taxes.
It is really an argument for better economic policymaking.
Government can have perfectly reasonable individual objectives — better employment rights, cleaner packaging, healthier food, environmental improvements and stronger consumer protection — while collectively imposing a burden that businesses struggle to absorb.
The BRC is asking ministers to consider the total bill.
There is, of course, another side to the argument.
Retailers themselves have responsibilities. High streets cannot be saved simply by cutting business rates. Consumers have changed the way they shop, and retailers must respond. Some stores will inevitably disappear because the economic model that supported them no longer works.
Nor should every regulation be dismissed as unnecessary red tape. Workers need protection, consumers need protection and environmental standards matter.
But the BRC is right about one fundamental principle: policy needs to be judged by its cumulative impact.
A shopkeeper does not receive ten separate bills labelled “Government policy”. They receive one set of costs.
If wages rise, National Insurance rises, electricity rises, business rates rise, packaging costs rise and regulation becomes more complicated, the business experiences the combined effect.
That is why this manifesto matters.
Britain's high streets are already undergoing profound change. The future will not be created by simply bringing back the retail model of the 1980s or 1990s.
The successful town centre of the future may contain fewer traditional shops but more restaurants, leisure, healthcare, housing, offices, services and experiences. Retail will remain important, but it will be part of a much broader urban economy.
For that transformation to happen, however, businesses need confidence to invest.
The Government should therefore listen carefully to the BRC — not necessarily by accepting every demand, but by recognising the central warning.
Britain cannot legislate its way to economic growth.
If every individual policy is designed with good intentions but the combined effect is to increase the cost of employing people, occupying premises, buying energy and operating a business, investment will suffer.
And when investment suffers, the consequences eventually appear on the high street.
The empty shop window is merely the final visible symptom of a much bigger economic problem.
The real question for Westminster is whether it wants Britain's retail industry merely to survive or whether it wants it to become one of the engines of Britain's next phase of economic growth.
The BRC has put its proposals on the table.
Now the Government has to decide whether it is prepared to buy into retail.
https://brc.org.uk/priorities/2026-buy-into-retail-manifesto/