“Make mine a double,” the Queen must have said. And so the final bank holiday weekend this side of the summer is extra-long and a valuable opportunity for many retailers to make up some of the sales lost over the past few difficult months.

“Make mine a double,” the Queen must have said. And so the final bank holiday weekend this side of the summer is extra-long and a valuable opportunity for many retailers to make up some of the sales lost over the past few difficult months.

But the factor that’s compounded that tough trading is the same one that will play a big part in determining the worth of this weekend – the weather.

Until last week, it felt as though a dry day was a rarer occurrence than the Prince of Wales presenting the weather forecast so I’m instinctively with those hoping that it doesn’t rain on parades, royal or retail.

Or am I wrong to think weather matters that much?

Certainly, some interviewers pour scorn on chief executives when it’s offered up as justification for poor results. How often have you heard one say: “Come off it, when things are going well you don’t say it was the sunshine not anything I did?”

Of course, the state of household budgets and the wider economy are the key determinants of the sector’s performance.

And how an individual business responds to conditions determines its fate. But traditionally we’ve wanted weather that is appropriate for the season and gets customers buying what we have in stock.

Extreme weather was bad news because it kept people at home. But has the internet changed all that? After acceptable footfall in March, when the sun shone, the wettest April on record coincided with double-digit declines in almost every part of the UK and it was high streets, which are the most vulnerable to rain and cold, that suffered most. (Shopping centres were the only category of retail location that saw footfall rise.) Online retail searches do mirror the temperature. Cooler conditions push people towards their screens (and hotter weather keeps them away). The four hottest days of April last year were the lowest for online retail searches.

But the same data shows people just as reluctant to buy summer fashions and garden furniture online as in stores when it’s cold. April’s online sales growth was the weakest this year and it was the poorest month for a year for sales growth overall.

Whatever the channel, weather that doesn’t follow the script still delivers more trouble than trade.

With members in mind, the British Retail Consortium’s first reaction is usually: what are we doing about it? Well, one thing is engaging practically and politically on how we cope with a future where the climate is different and the weather even less predictable.

Look at our new report Retail and Farming – Investing in Our Futures for how retailers are supporting suppliers on that. But, while we like to think we have contacts and influence at the highest level, lobbying God for better weather is probably beyond even the BRC.

  • Stephen Robertson, director-general, British Retail Consortium