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It will be co-chaired by Richard Pennycook, chairman of British Retail Consortium (BRC) and Andrew Griffiths, Conservative MP and member of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS).
The council formed to work and address issues like productivity, skills shortages and adapting to changing consumer behavior.
The other members of the council include Amazon UK manager Doug Gurr, John Lewis chairman Sir Charlie Mayfield and Asos chief executive Nick Beighton.
“The first Retail Sector Council comes at a moment of unprecedented change for our sector,” Pennycook said.
Retail is one of the largest private-sector employers in the country. The council provides strategic oversight of the challenges we are facing by seeking positive change and increased productivity.
“We will work together with industry and government to deliver our vision for the future of retail.”
Griffiths added: “Our new collaborative Retail Se

In the last week £2.87 trillion disappeared from global equity markets, the largest stock market crash seen since 2008.
Fortunately, most markets have rebound and investors belive the worst is over.
Despite calm returning, it is to remind people of the last financial crash and led some to believe. Briefly that another crisis was imminent.
It is the not only worrying comparative to the last financial crash which was a decade ago. Right from the start of the year thousands of jobs in the UK retail have been cut entirely or revealed to be at risk.
On January 1, the Big 4 have announced major restructures that will result in staff facing pay cuts in redundancy.
28 head office roles cut by Asda, thousands to be cut by Sainsbury in a restructure, Tesco to cut 800 and repositioning 900 more, At Morrisons a similar restructure can be seen with 700 face a pay cut or redundancy.
Marks & Spencer – often regarded as a bellwether of UK re

According to RPC report, UK’s largest 20 ecommerce retailer sales grew by 23% to £8.4 billion over the last year.
More than half of the sales figure came from UK’s three largest online retailers Asos, Shop Direct and Ocado reporting sales of £5.1 billion up from £4.4 billion a year earlier.
According to RPC’s co-head of retail Jeremy Drew, “technological advancements like AI chatbots and augmented reality apps boosted sales.”
“The maturing of m-commerce is helping (etailers) super-charge sales,” he said.
“From being virtually unknown five or 10 years ago, many online-only retailers are building strong brands and grabbing more and more market share.”
A report from Criteo supported this, which found that over half (53%) of inline purchases made from smartphones in the last quarter of 2017.
This continuous growth in inline sales could drive consolidation among the sector’s biggest players which was suggested by RPC.

There is a drop of 1 point in GfK’s consumer confidence Index to -10, which was in line with expectations and down from -9 in January.
Out of five measures that are used to determine the overall monthly index, three of them decreased, one remained constant and the other increased.
“Ongoing concerns about sluggish household income, rising prices paid by consumers in the shops, and the prospect of inflation-busting council tax and interest rate hikes has dented confidence after last month’s surprising rally,” GfK head of experience innovation Joe Staton said.
After the two year trend of negative sentiment, the overall index score bounced between 0 and -13 since February 2016. It proves the consumers pessimistic feeling about the state of household finances and the wider UK economy.
Due to the drop in the major purchase index and the gloomy start to 2018 for many retailers, shoppers continue to rein in spending.
Confidence remains subdued

New data from BRC-Nielsen Shop Price Index, deflation grew from 0.5% in January to 0.8% throughout the last month.
These figures helped by a slowdown in food deflation, easing from 1.9% in January to 1.6%.
Ambient food inflation saw a month-on-month rise of 0.3% to 2.5%, fresh food dropped from 1.7% to 0.9%, lowest since September 2017.
“This is a further sign that we have passed the peak of the upward pressure on inflation caused by the fall in the pound in June 2016,” British Retail Consortium chief executive Helen Dickinson said.
Over coming year this will squeeze on consumer incomes, but it is likely to do little to lift the rate of growth in consumption.
“In real terms earnings are still falling despite increase in wages and savings are unlikely to provide the same support to spending that they have over the last 18 months.”
Good news for consumers as the earnings and inflation are heading in the right directions for con

A research by accountancy firm Moore Stephens, more than half of owner managed businesses of which many of them retailers negotiate on the key concerns on the Brexit outcome.
There are also other concerns skills shortages and cyber attacks came significantly below Brexit, with 41% and 29% citing it as their key concerns for 2018 respectively.
More specifically, 38% of SMEs said the introduction of trade tariffs after Brexit was their main concern. 30% cited loss of labour and 23% said afraid of losing European customers was their concern.
“Whilst banks and other big businesses have the influence to lobby the Government for their own special Brexit clauses, there are concerns that small businesses will be forgotten about,” Moore Stephens’ partner Mark Lamb said.
The huge concern for business owners about what Brexit might mean for them. While negotiating the exit deal the government must take their needs seriously.
There could be poten