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UK shoppers are expected to spend £3.8bn this Boxing Day, 2% more than last year, with online sellers experiencing most of that growth but high streets also enjoying a boost from a renewed appetite for post-Christmas bargains.

Boxing Day remains one of the busiest shopping days of the year, but in recent years the dash for the high street has eased as more people opt to search for bargains from the sofa.

With many discounts kicking off from midnight on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day is now worth more than £1bn in sales, with 23 million people in the UK expected to be buying online shortly after unwrapping their gifts. That is half a million more than last year, according to analysis by the research company GlobalData for Vouchercodes.co.uk.

High streets and other shopping centres are expected to record a 1.5% rise in sales on Boxing Day compared with last year, ahead of the 0.6% pace of shop price inflation, according to the latest British Retail Consortium figures. That is less than half the 3.4% growth expected in online sales, according to GlobalData.

Kien Tan at the advisory firm PwC said Boxing Day could benefit from a more lacklustre Black Friday sales period this year, during which retailers were disappointed by demand as shoppers held out for better bargains.

“There are signs are that Black Friday has peaked in the UK and there will still be people looking for bargains on Boxing Day. It’s not necessarily a comeback but it’s still there – a British institution.”

He said the hunt for bargains came as shoppers were feeling more cautious than a year ago as there was “a lot more uncertainty and people are holding back”.

Tan said online shopping was on the rise again, driven by busy middle-aged people rather than fashion shoppers. They are likely to be ready to spend more on furniture and other gadgets for the home in the post-Christmas sales as it is now five years since the pandemic fuelled a boom in spending on home improvements, so many goods bought at that time are becoming worn out.

Before Christmas, there were signs that shoppers were holding off on purchases. On Christmas Eve, fashion retailers launched early discounts after a mild autumn and winter for much of the country held back sales of knitwear and coats. New Look, Boohoo and Sports Direct all offered discounts of up to 70%, and Next, John Lewis and Topshop offered 50% off.

Visitor numbers were down 4.5% on Tuesday compared with 23 December last year, according to the retail footfall measuring firm MRI as a bounceback in cities including London was offset by poor numbers in towns and shopping centres. Footfall recovered some ground on Christmas Eve, up 0.4% on a year earlier.

Moji Oshisanya, the chief commercial officer of VoucherCodes.co.uk, said: “The uplift in sales over the Boxing Day sales period is driven by two key factors. We’re seeing a resurgence in appetite for the Boxing Day sales, with shopper numbers forecast to be at their highest level in four years – a healthy 105.2 million [over a week]. The Boxing Day sales are often a moment for consumers to treat themselves post-Christmas, and with finances tight, the deals and discounts available will be used to stretch budgets further.

“However, increased participation isn’t the only driver: inflation is also to blame. Over the wider six-week Christmas period, from mid-November to the end of December, sales value is expected to grow by 3.2%, yet sales volume is forecast to fall by 0.3%. This indicates that while people are spending more, driving up overall sales figures, they won’t necessarily be taking home more items.”

Boxing Day now vies with 27 December for the busiest shopping day post-Christmas and that will be particularly true this year as the 27th is a Saturday, so many people will be off work.

About 44% of consumers say they plan to hit the high streets from Boxing Day onwards, with 29% heading to retail parks and 22% expecting to visit big shopping centres, according to MRI.

High street spending has come under pressure in recent years as some big retailers – including most John Lewis outlets, Aldi, Poundland, B&Q, Next and large Marks & Spencer stores, remain closed on Boxing Day.

With family structures more diverse, many households also enjoy several celebratory meals in different locations, while public transport shutdowns can hold up trade on the traditional start to the post-Christmas sales.

In order to win the jackpot, a lottery ticket holder must match all five white balls and the red Powerball selected during a drawing.

Tickets for the lottery cost $2 each – and the odds of winning the jackpot are 1 in 292.2 million, according to game organisers.

A winner has an option to choose a lump-sum payment or receive the full amount in an annuity paid over 29 years, but most winners opt for the upfront cash option.

The game, which began in 1992, is played in 45 of the 50 US states, the capital city of Washington, and in the US territories of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.

The winnings are subject to federal taxes of between 24% and 37%, and, in most cases, state taxes.

A Powerball player in Arkansas won a whopping $1.817bn (£1.34bn) jackpot in a Christmas Eve drawing, making it the second-largest lottery prize ever claimed.

The single winning ticket matched all six numbers – 4, 25, 31, 52, 59 and red Powerball 19 – giving the winner the option of taking a lump-sum cash payment of $834.9m.

This marks only the second time a Powerball jackpot has been won by a ticket sold in Arkansas, according to the lottery operator. Powerball did not identify the winner.

The largest single-ticket prize remains the $2.04bn jackpot won in 2022 by a player in Altadena, California.

In order to win the jackpot, a lottery ticket holder must match all five white balls and the red Powerball selected during a drawing.

Tickets for the lottery cost $2 each – and the odds of winning the jackpot are 1 in 292.2 million, according to game organisers.

A winner has an option to choose a lump-sum payment or receive the full amount in an annuity paid over 29 years, but most winners opt for the upfront cash option.

The game, which began in 1992, is played in 45 of the 50 US states, the capital city of Washington, and in the US territories of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.

The winnings are subject to federal taxes of between 24% and 37%, and, in most cases, state taxes.

The UK’s rollout of electric car chargers slackened markedly in 2025 amid investor concerns over a slower-than-expected switch to cleaner battery vehicles.

There were 87,200 chargers installed in the UK at the end of November, an increase of 13,500 compared with the end of 2024, according to data from Zapmap, which tracks charger installations.

That represented the smallest number of new chargers installed in the UK since 2022, and put the industry on track for growth of less than 20%, down from 37% the year before. It would be the slowest annual growth in the decade since installations started to take off.

The number of electric cars sold is still growing rapidly, accounting for 23% of British sales in the first 11 months of 2025 – up from 19% at the same point last year. However, growth has not been as quick as previously expected. Some manufacturers have slowed their switch from petrol to electric, while some investors in charging infrastructure have also slowed down.

Carmakers persuaded the UK government to weaken electric car sales targets despite warnings from the charging industry that lower sales would imperil investment.

Colin Walker, the head of transport at the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit, a thinktank, said the slowdown in charger installations this year was “no surprise” given the “rather mixed messages on EVs” from the UK government, including a new pay-per-mile tax on electric cars from 2028, announced at last month’s budget.

“Its weakening of the zero emission vehicle mandate could incentivise the sale of plug-in hybrids rather than EVs,” he said. “And while it won’t change the fact that EVs will remain considerably cheaper to run, the 3p per mile tax on EVs risks undermining consumer confidence. All of this could slow EV sales considerably, which, in turn, could undermine business confidence and slow investment in the public charging infrastructure this country needs.”

There were 48,100 slow chargers at the end of November, an increase of 15% over the year. The number of ultra-rapid chargers, which tend to be used for quick top-ups on longer journeys, rose 39% to about 9,800.

Vicky Read, the chief executive of ChargeUK, a lobby group for the charging industry, said that there had been fewer installations than the industry wanted of slow chargers, which tend to be used to charge more cheaply overnight.

“Across the market charge point operators have been facing rapidly rising costs, which has impacted the pace of the rollout in some more commercially challenging locations, while grid connections continue to hold back installations,” she said.

Some analysts believe that the UK’s charger rollout is on track. The supply of public charging across Great Britain remains ahead of demand by 1.5 years, according to analysis in September by Cenex, a non-profit research body. However, rapid chargers by motorways for longer journeys are much more developed: existing charge points could cope with demand for the next six years without any more added, Cenex said.

Read said delayed local electric vehicle infrastructure (Levi) funding for councils would start arriving in bulk in 2026 and 2027, helping installations to accelerate again.

She said: “To ensure we stay on track as we make this transition, we need to have the government’s support to reduce the cost burden – which is affecting driver prices as well as pace of rollout – and to remove the bottlenecks like connecting to the grid.”

Despite the UK’s progress in charger installations, the regional variations remain large. Northern Ireland, the poorest region in the UK, has only 39 public chargers for each 100,000 people, compared with 301 for London, according to Zapmap data last updated in October. Northern Ireland, the East Midlands and north-east England were the slowest regions for charger installations per person in the year to October.

Melanie Shufflebotham, the Zapmap chief operating officer, said there was still “strong growth in ultra-rapid charging”.

“Charge point operators face challenges as the tender and commercial contract process for the Levi fund have taken longer than anticipated, and in parallel, there are also concerns in terms of accessing grid connections in a timely fashion,” she added.

UK-listed companies will be able to bury controversies over executive pay for the first time in eight years, a thinktank has warned, after the Labour government shut down a public tracker meant to curb “abuses and excess in the boardroom”.

The public register was launched under the Tory prime minister Theresa May in 2017 to name and shame companies hit by shareholder revolts at their annual general meetings (AGMs). That included rebellions over issues such as excessive bonuses or salary increases for top earning bosses.

However, the Treasury – under the chancellor, Rachel Reeves – instructed the Investment Association (IA), the UK asset management trade body that maintained the register, to shut it down this autumn as part of a wider regulation action plan to increase economic growth by cutting “red tape” for businesses. The closure of the public log follows lobbying campaign by companies including the London Stock Exchange, whose bosses claim bad publicity over executive pay is harming the City’s competitiveness and deterring UK listings.

However, the High Pay Centre, a thinktank, is warning the move will harm transparency and make it easier for companies listed on the FTSE All-Share Index to dismiss investors’ concerns, starting in the 2026 annual shareholder meetings season.

“This is worrying, from our perspective,” Paddy Goffey, a researcher at the thinktank, said. “This would make it more likely that significant cases of shareholder dissent on issues of pay, governance and wider strategy will go unnoticed.”

About 26% of FTSE 100 companies have had a shareholder rebellion against executive pay over the past three years. Dissent is considered a shareholder rebellion if 20% or more of the vote is against a specific resolution. “This reflects the significant levels of dissent within shareholder votes and how crucial such information is for investors and other stakeholders,” Goffey said.

The High Pay Centre acknowledged corporate reporting rules could be burdensome and complex, and should be streamlined. However, that should not include discontinuing tools such as the register that provided genuine value to stakeholders, the thinktank said. The closure added to other “worrying trends” around corporate transparency such as the shift to online-only AGMs.

Rather than closing the register, companies should be forced to provide more detailed explanations about the reason for shareholder dissent and how their boards planned to respond in the future, the High Pay Centre said.

“Ultimately, discontinuing the register will make it much harder and more time-consuming to gather the relevant data and information, as such data could be ‘buried’ in complex filings, AGM results or lengthy reports,” it added.

The decision illustrates the significant cultural shift that has taken place across the City since the May government launched the world’s first public log of dissenting shareholder votes in order to “restore public confidence in big business”.

“It [the register] definitely had a role in holding companies to account in the early years, especially on remuneration, and for a while companies truly did worry about the prospect of being named on the register,” said Yousif Ebeed, the corporate governance lead at the assent managers Schroders.

“And at the time, there was a sense that companies were not giving sufficient weight to shareholder concerns. The register helped shine a light on these companies, to an extent kickstarting an environment where transparency and shareholder engagement have become embedded practice.”

Fast forward to 2025, and City campaigners are raising fears that the UK is losing out on investment to the US, where Donald Trump has embarked on a “bonfire of regulation” in an attempt to lure money and business.

The UK Treasury said in October tit was “grateful to the IA for establishing the register following a request from government” but that the public log had “served its purpose”. The Treasury added that the corporate governance code “already offered transparency for investors”.

Ebeed said most institutional investors would remain “unaffected”.

However, at a time when the government is pushing for more of the public to buy up UK shares, there is a fear that small retail investors could be left at a disadvantage.

“The reduction in transparency and knowledge on company practice could reduce the ability of investors to make informed decisions,” Goffey said.

“Having all this data in one place also makes it easier to track discontent, identify trends and compare companies or sectors. It is plausible that, with the raising of the barrier to holding companies accountable in this way, they [companies] will be less likely to take such dissent seriously and respond appropriately.”