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Fewer shoppers have headed to UK high streets in search of Boxing Day bargains, with central London suffering a significant decline in visitors as many decided to shun the traditional start of the sales.

Footfall at the country’s high streets and shopping centres fell on Friday morning, running slightly behind last year, according to figures from the monitoring company MRI Software. Across all UK retail destinations footfall slipped by 0.3%.

Following on from a decline in Boxing Day activity in 2024, there were 2.4% fewer visitors on Britain’s high streets than on 26 December last year, while there was a 2.6% slide in the number of people going to shopping centres.

However, retail parks bucked the trend and experienced a 6.9% increase in the number of visitors on Boxing Day morning. Retail parks, which are mostly in out-of-town locations, accessible by car and often offering free parking, have become more popular with shoppers in recent years thanks to their convenience.

The rise in shoppers deciding to visit retail parks could be seen as an “encouraging start to Boxing Day”, said Jenni Matthews, the marketing and insights director at MRI.

“This suggests that shoppers may well be coming out earlier than expected to grab those bargains; brush off the festive cobwebs,” she added.

Colder temperatures may have put off some would-be shoppers from travelling far from home. Central London recorded a 7.7% fall in the number of visitors compared with a year earlier, a much larger decline than the 3.4% fall recorded in other cities.

By contrast, there was a near 4% increase in visitor numbers in outer London, and there was a 10% rise in footfall in coastal towns, as consumers hoped to combine a visit to the shops with a day out.

The traditional Boxing Day start to the post-Christmas sales has increasingly shifted online in recent years, giving consumers the opportunity to secure some deals from the comfort of the sofa as early as Christmas Day itself. Large fashion and homeware retailers including Marks & Spencer and Next are now offering discounts of up to 50% online, while reductions will only be available in stores from Saturday.

Despite this, groups of shoppers travelled to Manchester’s Trafford Centre indoor mall, where some outlets opened their doors as early as 7.30am.

Queues gathered outside the Selfridges department store before opening, which was offering reductions of up to 50%, as was the cosmetics retailer Lush.

In the run-up to the big day, retailers had been hoping for a late rush to buy presents, given that Christmas Day fell on a Thursday this year, anticipating that shoppers would hunt out last-minute items at the start of the week.

However, there were signs that some consumers held back on purchases. Mild weather during the autumn and the start of winter for much of the country resulted in fewer people adding jumpers, coats or boots to their baskets, according to Clive Black, the head of consumer research at Shore Capital.

Many large fashion retailers – including Next and John Lewis – launched their reductions before Christmas, while others including New Look and Sports Direct were advertising discounts of up to 70%.

Retailers have faced a tough year of trading in 2025, with many consumers reining in their spending at a time when energy and grocery bills remain high. Uncertainty in the run-up to Rachel Reeve’s budget in late November over possible tax rises hit consumer confidence at the start of the crucial pre-Christmas trading period.

However, the average shopper is expected to spend £17 more on the end-of-year sales compared with last year, according to figures from the lender Barclays, taking the average budget to £253, up from £236 in 2024. However, it predicts that fewer consumers will take part amid cost of living pressures.

Consumers around the UK were expected to spend £3.6bn in the Boxing Day sales, as more sales shoppers use AI and other tools to help them locate the best deals. That figure was £1bn lower than was estimated for Boxing Day 2024.

Apple is seeking to overturn a landmark £1.5bn court ruling on behalf of millions of UK customers, which found the company overcharged them for years in its App Store.

The iPhone maker has applied to the court of appeal to challenge a verdict that campaigners heralded as the start of a “tidal shift against big tech”.

It is one of a cluster of cases heading towards trial in 2026 as consumers realise the mounting cost of paying up to 30% commission – what campaigners call the “Apple tax” – on apps and in-app purchases, which more people rely on for activities from fitness to dating.

The appeal, if allowed, involves one of several class action suits against Apple and Google in which consumers, small businesses and entrepreneurs are demanding over £6bn in combined compensation. The class action cases use an opt-out system that means millions of people can be represented at once in claims of breaches of competition law.

“It’s definitely a tipping point,” said Dr Rachael Kent, an academic at King’s College London who won the £1.5bn case against Apple on behalf of 36 million UK consumers. “People are pushing back against the harms from digital worlds, which they have to be living in and through every day and the financial implications of that,” she said.

Kent added that the win in October still felt “a bit pinch me”. If Apple’s appeal fails, every person in the UK who made App Store purchases between 2015 and 2024 could be entitled to a payout.

In the suite of class action cases, Apple and Google are accused of overcharging British consumers and developers in their app stores and, in the case of Apple, of “trapping” and overcharging customers with its iCloud data storage service.

Instead of up to 30%, Apple should be charging commission of 17.5% when selling apps and 10% on in-app purchases, while app developers should pay 10%, the competition appeal tribunal found in Kent’s case.

Another of the cases is being brought by Barry Rodger, a law professor at the University of Strathclyde, on behalf of more than 2,000 app developers who he argues are collectively entitled to up to £1bn in compensation.

“Small and medium-sized app developer businesses have suffered as the result of excessive profiteering by the App Store and Google Play,” he said. His case alleges Google Play has charged “excessive, arbitrary and discriminatory commissions” against developers, with the makers of dating and games apps particularly affected.

His suit is expected to reach trial at the competitions appeal tribunal in October 2026, and will be jointly managed with a claim for about £1bn on behalf of 19 million Google Play customers, who are alleged to have been overcharged. That case is being brought by the consumer activist Liz Coll and accuses Google of “excluding competition and/or charging an unlawfully high level of commission on digital purchases”, breaching competition law.

Coll said: “These types of large collective proceedings are new in the UK, but I’m really excited about the potential of the Kent decision to not only make people aware they were paying too much for apps through opaque commission but also that there is now a clear route to getting that put right. Where we need consumers to get really active now is in claiming back the money they’re owed.”

A Google spokesperson said: “Android provides more choice than any other platform and our fees are the lowest of any major app platform. We’ll defend these cases vigorously.”

Google argues that the class action cases seek to upend a system that has lowered prices and increased choice and that, if successful, would make downloading and using apps on Android phones more complicated and less safe.

And in the largest of all the claims, November saw the consumer campaign group Which? announce a £3bn claim against Apple over its iCloud services, claiming it is “trapping” customers with Apple devices into using it.

Apple called the Which? claims unfounded and said no customers are required to use iCloud. The company said it strongly disagrees with the ruling in Kent’s case over the App Store, and the tribunal took a flawed view of the “thriving and competitive app economy”, with other platforms providing “vigorous competition”. It said most apps are subject to a 15% commission, and the App Store helps drive the UK’s digital economy, facilitating billings and sales of over $55bn (£41bn) in the UK in 2024.

Kent said that people are “waking up to the harms of digital life and how it can be detrimental mentally, physically and financially”.

“There is a tidal shift that is happening against big tech,” she said. “Consumers are looking at all of the tools that they have to use every day. Covid really accelerated our reliance on technology and many of us went from using five apps in a week to perhaps 10 apps in a day to manage food shopping, food delivery, retail, fitness and diet tracking, keeping in close communication with friends and family, much more social media, increased screen time.

“A big part of the last six years working the case has been about educating people that this is actually happening. That’s what tech giants and marketeers like Apple are so brilliant at. It’s creating an ecosystem where we are foreclosed into decision making and we don’t even realise that this is actually how it’s happening.”