Where will Jeremy Hunt’s Budget leave Britain’s battered high street?

Business rates are due to rise sharply in April. It may be enough to push some embattled retailers over the edge, as more and more find themselves teetering on the brink, writes James Moore

Retail footfall dropped 12 per cent in October compared to September (Getty)

Retailer Joules has run out of energy and called in administrators. Time to dial up Queen’s “Another One Bites the Dust” on Spotify? That might sound brutal, but there’s more than enough cruelty to go round as the government continues its softening-up exercise while Jeremy Hunt prepares to reveal the price we’re going to be charged for the Tory party’s mistakes.

Joules’s fall into administration is a familiar story. Profit warnings with revenues falling short of City expectations; the unveiling of a recovery plan amid a scramble to secure fresh investment that doesn’t materialise; a phone call to the corporate recovery people.

Corporate recovery is rare in being a good business to be in right now. All this comes less than a week after Next swooped in to pick up the made.com brand but precious little else from the wreckage left by the collapse of the online furniture retailer, which fancied itself a British Ikea and once boasted a valuation of around £800m.