British Retail Consortium CEO on Inflation, Labor Reform, and AI Regulation in UK Retail | RTS 2026

Hello, everyone.

This is Omnitalk Retail.

I'm Chris Walton and we are coming to you live from the Retail Technology show in London from the Vuzion podcast studio.

And I am pleased to introduce my next guest for today, Helen Dickinson, the chief executive at the British Retail Consortium.

Helen, welcome to omnitalk.

Thanks for joining us.

Thank you very much.

Yeah, tell us about yourself and also what the British Retail Consortium does.

So I'm the chief executive and the BRC is a trade body and industry body.

So we have the majority of the larger retail businesses in the UK as members of the brc, and we also have some trade associations who look after independent businesses and smaller retailers who are also members.

So our job is to represent the industry in the media with government to try and influence positive change or stop negative change.

A lot of both of those right now.

Right.

Probably more so the last.

Yeah.

We tend to spend more time on the second part than the first part.

Right, right.

And what's your background, too?

My background is I used to be an accountant once.

I used to work for one of the big four accounting firms and I was there for over 20 years, and then somebody tapped me on the shoulder one day and I ended up at the brc.

So the connection was retail.

So I was always looking after retail clients when was.

When I was at kpmg.

Wow.

What did that experience give you that you still draw upon in your role now?

I think that experience gave me firstly, you know, some of the relationships of people within the industry, and that is obviously really important.

It also gave me, I think, the sort of analytical brain that you need to try and be able to solve complex problems.

Which makes me sound like I'm, you know, not a scientist, but at least.

Put them in dollars.

Yeah.

You've got to look across, you know, different views and try to come to some consensus when you're in a, you know, an industry body or a trade association.

What it didn't teach me is anything to do with politics or anything to do with government and how they work.

So all of that was like a.

A journey of newness.

And it's taken 12 years and I still haven't quite got to the bottom of it.

A baptism by fire, learning on the job, I take it?

Yes, yes, yes.

Well, so you've been at the BRC now, how long?

12 Years.

12 Years?

13 Years, yeah.

Oh, my gosh.

12.

Okay.

So that's a good bit of time.

You've seen a lot of different things.

You've seen the pandemic, you've Seen Brexit as well.

So, like, I'm curious, in that time, what is.

Is the most significant way your role or your job has changed and also what hasn't changed about the role too?

I think what hasn't changed is that you have a diverse, exciting industry where everybody has a point of view about something.

And so trying to work out what the consistent point of view is, is part of the art of being in a trade association.

So I think the, you know, the excitement, the strength of opinion and, you know, voice that businesses have themselves is still there and has always been there, which is, you know, the strength of the industry.

And what's different is like, you know, everything is different.

If you think about it, you know, we've had four or five different.

Right.

Four or five different governments.

That's a whole different set of people.

As you know, you mentioned, we've had Brexit, we had Covid, we had the supply chain challenges and the previous energy crisis, which was the other one, not this one, the other one.

And so in each of those sort of phases of time, it's felt like a different job.

So although I've been here for a long time, it's not like I'm doing the same job as I was 13 years ago.

It's.

It's just.

It's different people.

It's, you know, some of the issues are the same, but not all of them.

So it's, you know, it's mainly different issues and it's, you know, a different environment.

So it's just a different job.

Yeah, I imagine just even in the last, like, five or six years alone, the learning on the job has got to be immense.

It's got to be an incredible crucible.

Well, and also, because it isn't really.

I mean, the interesting thing, coming back to your question earlier about, you know, the difference between, between the old career and the new one is the old career.

I used to be, you know, as I said, an accountant, an auditor.

It's like process.

This is what you do.

That was the rule.

But, you know, that was the book.

You did that, then you did this, then you did that.

There is no.

There's no book.

No book.

And if you want to influence a government, then there is no.

There's, you know, there's sort of channels, you know, you can talk to them, you can use the media, you can mobilise MPs, mobilise Parliament and really try and, you know, get people aligned with what it is that you're trying to do.

But how much effort and the way that you do that, you know, it depends on the circumstances, it depends on the issue, it depends on the politics and what is happening from a political point of view as well as I think a lot of business leaders think that it's just logical they should.

Of course they should do that, shouldn't they?

And it's kind of like, yeah, of course they should, but that doesn't mean that they will.

So it's never quite as simple as that.

Yeah, issues are always complex.

All right, so that's kind of where we were.

I'm curious if we turn our attention to now, what are your biggest objectives at the BRC as you look into the years ahead?

Well, the biggest objective right now is all around sort of supporting the industry to navigate what's the, you know, the.

Well, we're in it.

So it's not even like just the consequences, the sort of, the, the environment of, and the knock on consequences of what is happening in the Middle East.

So, you know, we are.

There's no sort of shortages of anything in this country at the moment, but there are obviously people are seeing prices going up in their supply chains.

Whether that is, you know, logistics costs, production costs, costs of, you know, farming, food, all of that increased energy cost is going to start feeding through those supply chains and into, you know, the pockets of consumers in terms of higher prices over the coming months.

So the biggest objective from our point of view is really providing a safe space for the retailers to talk to each other so that, you know, we can horizon scan and make sure that everybody's aware of what's next on the horizon and just troubleshoot if there are any issues and also to try and persuade the government to do some things that would actually alleviate at least some of that inflationary pressure.

So really looking at energy costs and how they're made up, because a lot of our energy costs are taxes and levies is this country.

So is there anything that they can do to reduce those which would reduce the costs of energy for businesses and you know, pausing or shifting some of the legislation, some of the regulations that they were going to put in and kind of persuading them that now is not the time to be doing that because people need to be focused on managing inflationary costs out of their business because otherwise it will be customers that pay the price.

Right, right.

Yeah.

And you know, I heard this term yesterday, the black swan event that is the Middle east, you know, we've had a lot of those.

I'm curious too, is it.

So that's a major Headwind.

Are there any other headwinds that are just generally lying there, you know, that you've been trying to tackle day in and day out, even before the crisis in the Middle east as well.

So most of them relate to regulations that are in the pipeline in this country.

So the biggest one of those is the changes to employment.

Okay.

So there was a big act that was passed in December last year called the Employment Rights Act.

So this is, you know, a really comprehensive and major shift to everything from, you know, what probation periods look like, how much notice you have to give staff of shift changes, what sort of contracts you have to offer your employees if you're a business.

So a lot of them will have a big implication for retail businesses and how they operate.

So the law has passed, but there's still a whole lot of detail in how they're going to implement some of it.

So our job has been to try and influence, and will continue to be to influence some of those provisions and make sure that they don't stand in the way of retailers ability to continue to offer flexible, local, part time, entry level jobs, which are really, really important.

And there is a risk that they will do that.

So that's the, the other big thing.

And it's really, I mean, it's really big.

Yeah, right, yeah, it's just day to day big too.

Right.

So yeah, you got the head, you got the supply headwind and then you've got the labor headwind too, it sounds like here.

Yeah.

And we, you know, there is, there's a big problem in this country.

There's a million Neets.

So not in employment or education or training.

So this is young people, the employment, the unemployment figures are about 5%.

They did come down a bit in the last month, but generally speaking, unemployment has been rising.

So, you know, while government wants to change employment rights for people who are working, we've got to be careful that we don't do that at the expense of losing a whole bunch of jobs.

So, yeah, the labour market is not.

There's a lot of people who are on long term sick with mental health problems.

And I'm sure you've heard about the NHS and waiting lists and all the rest of it as well.

So that's a paramount issue.

All right, so the other issue that's on the horizon here, so to speak, is AI.

And we'll get you out of here on this.

So, so how does the, how is the BRC looking at the advent of AI?

Are you, Is it generally looking at it excitedly, cautiously, a mix of both.

Like, what's your interpretation there?

I think when you talk to, or when I talk to retail leaders, I think some of them are still sort of navigating whether what they think the answer to that question is.

Right, right.

And I think, you know, we're only in the foothills of working out what some of the bigger use cases are, because I think what you can do is you can, you know, make a business a little bit more efficient.

Right.

But if you haven't really, you know, got rid of the internal silos and shifted the whole model of efficiency.

Yeah.

The whole business, the operating model, then you're not really taking full advantage of what the technology will be able to do.

So I think we're in.

You know, I think there is a great opportunity there, but I think we are still in the very early days of trying to, to, to leverage it.

From our point of view, it's much more about the regulation that sits around it.

So, you know, what does, you know, what does consumer protection regulation look like or should it look like in the future on the back of some of these technologies?

Don't expect me to answer that question now because I don't know.

But that is, that is, that's kind of the sort of thing that we're looking at.

I always love when I get gold at the very end of the interview.

Helen, that's great.

I mean, that's interesting for me because that's a topic that I have not even heard word one about in the United States particularly.

And so to hear you saying that it's at least top of mind, I think that's interesting.

And why is that?

I think because.

Well, I think interestingly, because I said it earlier on the stage in my interview was, you know, in the U.S. perhaps it's, you know, much more open.

Anything goes.

In the eu, they've sort of taken the other extreme.

There is actually an opportunity for the UK to sort of find a, a place in between those two ends of the spectrum in, in how you get the, the sort of the right guardrails without undermining the innovation.

And if we could do that, then, you know, that would be an opportunity for the uk.

And that's how you're approaching the issue too, or the topic maybe not so much an issue.

Well, thank you, Helen, that's really great.

And thanks for giving me that insight at the end.

That was really unexpected and serendipitous, so I enjoyed that.

Helen Dickinson, again, the chief executive at the British Retail Consortium.

Thanks for joining me.

I hope you have a great rest of the Retail technology show here in London.

Thanks to Vuzion for making all of our coverage of the conference possible.

And until next time, as always, everybody, be careful out there.