Comment - Have John Lewis bosses been blinded by the internet?

Analysts are predicting a 48 per cent surge in sales when non-essential shops open, as you might expect after a three-month lockdown.

But John Lewis won’t be at the party. And if I was a Sheffield employee I would be perplexed and cross.

It seems as though the Barker’s Pool store is part of an experiment that flies in the face of the facts, by people in thrall to the internet.

Bosses told a delegation of four Sheffield MPs that the store was profitable before the pandemic. This is significant when you’ve just slumped to a £517m loss.

But chief executive Sharon White and executive director Pippa Wicks said they thought footfall would not return after lockdown.

And they seemed to think shopping with John Lewis on the internet was the best way forward.

But making huge decisions based on assumptions during a pandemic seems a strange way to run a company.

The Sheffield branch has thousands of loyal customers and a local authority that will do anything to get it to stay. As well as spending £3.4m buying the six-storey building, Sheffield City Council was willing to pay a ‘contribution’ to refurbish it, a job one surveyor put at £6m to £10m.

The Valuation Office website also shows the building’s rateable value fell from £1.8m annually to £1.2m in September.

And the firm may not even be paying rent since in the new deal rent is based on sales, which are zero when it is shut.

There’s a lot more going for John Lewis in Sheffield too, not least its position at the heart of the £480m Heart of the City development and a city living boom creating local customers.

The store sold a lot of items people prefer to see and try first, including furniture, soft furnishings, computers and cameras.

And you can’t do John Lewis’s famous customer service online - in fact on there you’re just another retailer in a cutthroat competition to be cheapest.

Given all this, it would make sense to reopen on Monday on a trial basis, if only for the sake of the 299 staff.