SOS from stores over £2.9bn debt crisis

SOS from stores over £2.9bn debt crisis as moratorium on rent collection ends on 30 June

Retailers have called for Government intervention over an impending £2.9billion debt crisis next month.

An official moratorium on aggressive rent collection ends on June 30. 

Two thirds of retailers are warning they will be subject to landlord legal measures from July, according to the British Retail Consortium.

Two thirds of retailers are warning they will be subject to landlord legal measures from July

The BRC said the Government must step in to ringfence rent debts built up during the pandemic and extend the moratorium over those debts to the end of the year.

Failure to act could mean thousands more shops will be forced to close, it said. One in seven stores is already empty.

Helen Dickinson, chief executive of the BRC, said: ‘Retailers have taken a battering over the pandemic. Without action, it will be our city centres, our high streets and our shopping centres that suffer the consequences, holding back the wider economic recovery.’