Christmas is normally a slack time for the store design and build sector, but this year things look a little different.

It’s shutdown time for store design departments for this year. Or at least it is as far as opening new stores is concerned. Down tools. Get the Christmas shopping underway or failing that, go down the pub.

What a pleasant picture and if only it were the case. This year store openings look set to continue until the man with the large sack heads for the chimney.

Ten days from now the Primark store-opening machine will have done its work in Brussels and the retailer’s first shop in that city will be ushering shoppers through its doors.

But hang on. Aren’t we supposed to be at a tipping point? Isn’t the year shortly coming to an end and shouldn’t retailers have just a single focus – to make as much money as possible before the Jan/Feb doldrums?

Well yes to the latter part of the statement but what is more apparent than ever is that for those who are doing well, stores cannot be opened quickly enough, wherever they are and whatever the time of year.

As the year grinds towards its inevitable conclusion however, the point perhaps is that it is those that are at the discount end of the spectrum that are probably the busiest as far as any kind of retail space race is concerned.

It’s a fair bet there will be a few more Aldi and Lidl branches in this country before the close of the year and ‘general store’ Tiger continues to run and run as it hunts for more sites.

But does this mean more shops overall or just more at the value end of things? Probably the latter as a visit to many high streets outside the capital reveals the fact that there are still plenty of vacant units and some of these may never by used as shops again.

Times continue to change and the seemingly inexorable spread of the discounters is not a signal that we should expect more stores overall.

Instead, the majority of store design activity in 2015 seems likely to be about refurbishment and renewal rather than new build.

And the best regional shopping centres seem to be where much of this energy is focussed at the moment with the Westfields, Bluewater and Lakside all looking busy.

Nothing particularly remarkable in any of this, except for the fact that nothing stops these days. Shoppers may throng, but so do the numbers of those involved in creating appropriate environments for them.