London Tube strike affects retailers

Transport strikes are a source of aggravation for most London commuters, however the impact they have on businesses are both collosal and damaging.

John Lewis today released its weekly sales figures, which dipped 0.6 percent over last year, and cited the tube strike as hanpering its sales.

This may seem like a relatively small loss for the buoyant retailer, but for smaller businesses the impact can be detrimemental.

A sharp drop in footfall will see a loss of sales and bookings as a result of the Tube strike. The British Council of Shopping Centres (BCSC) said that on the day of the last strike on 9 July, London shopping malls suffered a nine per cent drop in visitors compared with the same day last year.

600 retailers in the West-End affected

The New West End Company said the strike action would hit turnover for many of the 600 businesses it represents on Oxford Street, Regent Street and Bond Street and bring chaos a huge number of visitors.

“Strike action is not the way we should be trying to settle disputes in the 21st century and the West End's businesses, employees and residents deserve better than this. We encourage all sides to resolve the dispute as it reflects badly on London as a global city where it is easy to do business” a spokesperson said.

Although the cost to businesses is hard to quantify, a snap poll by the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) found that strike action on 6 February last year cost London businesses 600 million pounds.

While the full impact on last week's srikes is not yet known, The Centre for Economics and Business Research chairman Mike Williams estimated the February 2014 strike to have cost the London economy 10 million pounds a day while the London Chamber of Commerce & Industry (LCCI) put that figure at 50 million pounds.