Coronavirus: The reopening of shops felt like the beginning of the end for the 2m rule - Sky News

Queues outside shops across the country were the evidence the prime minister needed that many are willing to heed his call to hit the high street.

Despite the potential for increased exposure to coronavirus, long lines at shops including Primark, which has no online presence but great customer loyalty, suggests there is certainly demand.

Retail analysts Springboard said footfall was up more than 40% week on week, though still down a third on the same Monday last year.

So today may prove to be the start of a retail recovery, but anecdotally it felt like the beginning of the end for the two-metre rule.

Image: A shopper carries a variety of shopping bags on Oxford Street in London

A morning spent in and around Oxford Street in central London suggests that while retailers have bent over backwards to accommodate the approved distance, many have already moved to one metre.

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As in supermarkets, distancing has a habit of breaking down once people are inside a shop, and so it proved on Monday.

Selfridges, a temple to non-essential retail if ever there was one, cannot be blamed for a lack of effort in imposing the two-metre distance on customers.

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Staff applauded the arrival of the first customers in 13 weeks when the doors opened at 11am - a moment that perhaps reflected the relief of people whose jobs may have felt a little more secure as a result.

Image: The first customers react as they are filmed entering Selfridges department store

The retail experience was new too, rebuilt around government guidelines.

Yellow markers on the floor and escalators denote the two-metre gap, hand sanitiser stations have been installed around the store and fitting rooms are operating at reduced capacity, with unwanted items quarantined for 72 hours and surfaces wiped and steam cleaned after each customer has left.

Access has also been limited to 2,500 people at any one time, about a quarter of capacity on a busy day.

In practice, however, some shoppers were more rigorous about the rules than others.

The two-metre rule was often breached on the escalators, perhaps because people were facing the back of the person ahead of them.

Groups of younger shoppers moved together in close proximity, many of them of school age but actively encouraged to go shopping by the same government that has abandoned its efforts to fully reopen the education system this academic year.

Image: Shoppers wearing face masks are seen in Selfridges

And plenty of shoppers were willing to encroach closer than two metres on others as they moved around the store.

Outside streets that have been truly deserted for months were again busy, though still a long way from the packed pavements that used to define London's most famous shopping streets.

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And to walk a block north or south of the main retail routes was to be reminded that this is a country and an economy a long way from normality.

With offices still abandoned and bars and restaurants still closed, central London streets with low residential density are still largely abandoned.

It will take more than a day to demonstrate whether consumers are ready to lead a retail recovery. But the effort to restart the economy without reawakening the virus is under way.

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2020-06-15 17:44:54Z
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