The British Gas owner will buy about 14 LNG cargoes per year from Delfin Midstream’s new deepwater port, 40 nautical miles off the coast of Louisiana.

The million tonnes of LNG per year would be enough to heat 5 per cent of UK homes and Centrica said it intended to bring the gas to Britain, although it has the rights to sell it anywhere in the world.

The sale and purchase agreement with Delfin follows a heads of agreement signed in August 2022, at which stage the much-delayed project was expected to take a final investment decision later that year and to start exporting in 2026. Delfin is still working on a final investment decision and no gas is due to be exported until 2027.

Centrica said that as a foundation customer of the project, its agreement “underpins investment in the next wave of incremental LNG supply from the US”.

Chris O’Shea, the Centrica chief executive, said: “This agreement is good news for our customers and the country. The last year has demonstrated the critical importance of investing in the UK’s energy security. Natural gas is an essential transition fuel in the move to net zero and securing international agreements such as this are vital to the UK’s energy security.”

Dudley Poston, the chief executive of Delfin, said: “With the off-take capacity for Delfin’s first floating LNG vessel now sold, we continue to move towards final investment decision and bring this important project forward, becoming a partner to countries like the UK as it continues to make progress bolstering national energy security and driving down prices with clean, reliable LNG.”

Centrica is a FTSE 100 energy group, which posted record adjusted profits of £3.3 billion last year. It is best known for running Britain’s biggest household energy supplier, British Gas, which has about 7.5 million customers. However, it also has a North Sea gas business, operates the Rough gas storage site, has a 20 per cent stake in Britain’s nuclear plants and runs a significant energy marketing and trading business.

Supplies of LNG – gas super-chilled to liquid form for transport by tanker – have become increasingly important over the past year after Russia curtailed pipeline gas supplies to Europe in retaliation for Western sanctions imposed over its invasion of Ukraine. Gas prices surged to all-time highs of more than ten times usual levels last summer, although have now receded closer to pre-crisis levels.

Last year Britain’s LNG imports rose by 74 per cent to a record high, partly driven by cargoes being unloaded at UK LNG terminals and then transported by pipeline to Europe, which had insufficient LNG import terminals of its own to meet demand. America provided about half of Britain’s LNG, overtaking Qatar which had been Britain’s biggest LNG supplier for the previous 13 years.

Centrica said it was “investing heavily to future-proof the UK’s energy supply and address one of the underlying causes of the energy crisis”, highlighting its deal with Equinor last summer to increase the volumes of pipeline gas it imports from Norway. At the end of last month Centrica announced that it was almost doubling the capacity of the Rough gas storage facility, which it partially reopened last October.

Centrica is seeking to emphasise its role in delivering energy security for Britain as it braces for a political row when it is expected to report record half-year profits for its British Gas supply business later this month.

“Of course we thought about the people’s safety first but in the back of our heads we were thinking, ‘Oh my god, we thought we were about to see our summer stuff and it’s not going to come’,” recalled Krzywosińska, 43, who moved to the UK from Poland in 2004 and started the company, called Organic Zoo, in 2010.

She said the factory owners called her straight away to explain the closure “and reassured us that whatever happened, they would be very frank and transparent. They understood how we were feeling but they had bigger fish to fry. They had to build the bomb shelters to make sure that people were safe.”

It was an important modification to the factory. Krzywosińska said that when the factory in Lviv reopened two weeks later, “very often” sirens would sound and factory workers would “have to leave everything halfway done and head to the bomb shelters”. The nearest bombings were less than two kilometres away, she added.

Further delays were caused by interruptions to the electricity supply. “One day the electricity would be [on] from eight in the morning until twelve, and then the next day it would be from seven until ten in the evening. And the workers were wonderful, they would say, ‘We don’t mind coming in the evening’.”

Brighton-based Organic Zoo’s summer collection finally arrived at the end of April, two months later than planned, but Krzywosińska said the brand’s stockists, which include Selfridges and Harrods, were “so supportive. They were like, ‘We understand, and we will wait’.” Some of Organic Zoo’s best-sellers include its “Midnight” collection of organic cotton T-shirts, dresses and romper suits which sell for between £28 and £50.

Not all of the factory’s customers were so understanding, said Krzywosińska. “They lost a lot of customers because brands moved away from them. But for us the experience was even more bonding as a partnership. They really need the work — they still need to feed their families, but they also need to forget a little bit of what’s going on.”

The majority of the factory’s 300 staff today are women, said Krzywosińska, with many male employees being called up to fight in the conflict. “Working at the factory together creates for them a bit of a family feel with the husbands being away.” Despite the hardship they face, the standard of the work has never been better, she says. “They really go the extra mile to keep you as a customer.” Krzywosińska employs seven staff in Brighton and expects that Organic Zoo will have sales of more than £2.5 million this year.

The outbreak of the war more than two years ago prevented what would have been Krzywosińska’s first trip to visit the factory, and it has not been safe to reschedule the trip since. However, the factory’s bosses have made several trips to the UK and have also met Krzywosińska in Denmark, where the factory’s owners are based. This face-to-face interaction is vital when collaborating on product development, she says.

“It’s a true partnership. We don’t go to a trade show and go, ‘We like this [product]’ and order 1,000 of them. Everything is designed and is bespoke. At least twice a year we have proper meetings face to face so we can discuss the strategy, the innovation, the new collections. And we need to see the fabrics that are available — these things are very difficult to do on Zoom.”

However, the only lasting impact on logistics so far has been slightly longer lead times due to delays at the border, which Krzywosińska says is due to staff shortages after officers were conscripted. “Truck transportation is working well. It takes a bit longer because the borders are slower, but it’s still a shorter time than bringing things by sea from places like the Far East. It just means we need to be more organised in certain departments.”

In practical terms, this means sending next season’s samples at the same time as the current season’s production run to minimise the amount of packages in transit at any one time.

Krzywosińska says she is proud that the relationship has thrived, despite the conflict, and urged other British businesses to consider working with manufacturing partners in Ukraine. “Supporting the factory is supporting the [Ukrainian] people,” she said.

Ofgem, the energy regulator, is consulting charities and campaigners on planned legal changes to make it harder for energy firms to break into customers’ homes. It has been inundated with more than 20,000 responses. Citizens Advice is leading calls for “meaningful changes” to protect vulnerable people.

The regulator’s new rules, which are due to be in place before winter, are the result of a Times investigation which found that British Gas was sending agents to forcibly install pay-as-you-go meters in customers’ homes, even when they were known to have extreme vulnerabilities. People with prepayment meters who cannot afford to top up are cut off from their supply.

Ofgem’s initial proposals for change, announced in April, were for a voluntary code of practice for suppliers, including a ban on force-fitting meters in the homes of people over 85 who lived alone.

But after opening a statutory consultation on the changes last month, the regulator has been warned by thousands of respondents that the proposals must be strengthened.

Citizens Advice, the charity which has worked with Ofgem to develop the rules, released its response to the consultation.

It stated that, to ensure “meaningful changes”, Ofgem should amend the code before it becomes law. In particular, it argued that the ban on forced installations must cover all homes with children under five, anyone suffering from dementia or Alzheimer’s disease, anyone with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and those with “serious mental and developmental health conditions”.

These changes would protect millions more people from energy firms breaking into their homes and being forced onto prepayment meters.

Citizens Advice said its casework showed that children under five “are enduring significant detriment because of prepayment meters”.

As an example, it shared a case study of a single mother with several children, including a 15-month-old with severe asthma. The heating should be on during the day and two humidifiers should be running to prevent the baby’s asthma symptoms worsening. However, the family’s home is on a prepayment meter so “her children are often left without heat or power”.

The charity’s response stated that the harm to children’s development caused by living in cold homes can range from impacts on educational attainment to severe medical problems. It added: “Citizens Advice strongly believes that no child should face the level of lifelong harm that regular and extended self-disconnection can cause.” It also stated that there should be thorough assessments of all homes with children under the age of 16.

Ofgem said that it had not yet changed its proposals despite advice from three NHS clinicians. Its consultation paper stated that the doctors “argued that children under five should be included” in the ban because young children had an increased risk of breathing problems, such as asthma and bronchitis. Cold homes were also linked to low weight gain in babies, slower growth and development, and higher levels of hospital admissions.

Citizens Advice wrote that Ofgem’s proposals included “significant oversight around the treatment of serious mental and developmental health conditions”, and said those with dementia should be included in the ban.

As an example, it shared a case study of a man with dementia who rang Citizens Advice in October while confused and cold as he was cut off from his energy supply, had no hot water and had been awake for 24 hours.

The charity also said Ofgem should be clearer on the details of its new requirement for suppliers to make ten contact attempts with consumers. It added that the impact of high energy prices and the cost of living crisis meant that “the risks associated with force-fitting a prepayment meter are far more significant” than they were previously.

A campaign group, 38 degrees, helped 20,028 individuals send responses to Ofgem’s consultation. Almost all — 97 per cent — said they believed all under fives should be protected by a full ban and 95 per cent called for a full ban on any forced installations of prepayment meters for anyone.

Christine Davies, from Carmarthen, Wales, wrote in her response: “I live in dread, personally, of having to transfer to a prepayment meter at some point. I am disabled with multiple chronic illnesses and struggle to pay my bills. I am afraid of putting my heating on for too long and for as much as I need it.”

Ellie Gellard, strategic director at 38 Degrees, said: “The public haven’t forgotten last winter’s horrific prepayment scandal, when journalists revealed how energy giants like British Gas were breaking into homes and forcing families onto expensive tariffs, which could leave them cut off without power. It’s time for Ofgem to listen to the public and ban all forced prepayment meter installations, so no-one gets left in the cold next winter.”

Simon Francis, coordinator of the End Fuel Poverty Coalition, said the numbers of respondents “shows the strength of feeling among the general public about the forced prepayment meter scandal,” adding: “The message to Ofgem and the government is clear: The protections proposed do not go far enough and do not protect many of the most vulnerable households.”

Ofgem has had feedback from other campaigners that the ban on forced installations of prepayment meters should include anyone over 75, ten years younger than those covered in their proposed changes.

Ofgem has also been told that those who are currently deemed to be in a slightly lower risk category should include those living a significant distance away from a top-up retailer with no personal transport.

Last year, energy suppliers force-fitted prepayment meters in customers’ homes more than 94,000 times.

The undercover Times investigation found that British Gas had sent agents to force-fit prepayment meters in homes of people with known vulnerabilities. Those targeted included the elderly, customers with severe mental health problems and the mother of a four-week-old baby.

The reports led to investigations by the government, two parliamentary committees and Ofgem. The force-fitting of prepayment meters has been suspended and Lord Justice Edis, one of the country’s most senior judges, has ordered courts to stop listing hearings for energy warrants. The order has not been lifted since and without these warrants the firms cannot force-fit meters.

Firms have also been told they must identify cases where they have wrongfully installed the meters and offer those customers compensation. A company used to oversee the force-fitting of prepayment meters for suppliers has stopped doing the work for them following the Times investigation.

Under Ofgem’s plans for change, those who have meters fitted would be given a £30 emergency credit per meter — but this amount would be added to their debt.

The rules also require representatives of the firms force-fitting meters to wear body cameras or audio recorders, with customers’ permission, so their behaviour can be checked.

When it launched its consultation, Neil Kenward, director for strategy at Ofgem, said: “We are committed to ensuring robust protections are in place for vulnerable customers.”

The executive, 56, credited with creating Barbiemania while reviving the fortunes of Mattel, the toymaker, had been expecting the Old Navy clothing retailer to release its second-quarter earnings after the close of normal trading on Wall Street.

Unfortunately, the results were published briefly on the company’s website in the morning, New York time, prompting its shares to drop by almost 10 per cent before trading in the stock was halted.

“As soon as the error was caught, we notified the NYSE (New York Stock Exchange) and trading of our stock was halted temporarily,” Gap said.

Once order had been restored and trading resumed, investors liked what they saw. The owner of Banana Republic and Athleta reported a 5 per cent rise in second-quarter sales, with net sales at Old Navy up by 8 per cent on the same three-month period a year ago.

The company, which was founded in 1969 by Donald and Doris Fisher in San Francisco, California, has been seeking to turn around its business by bringing in fresher styles and keeping a tight control on costs. In 2021 Gap closed its 81 stores in the UK and the Republic of Ireland.

Gap reaffirmed its net sales and operating expense outlook for the present financial year and increased its gross-margin expectations. The retailer now expects annual gross margin to expand by about 200 basis points, compared with its previous forecast of at least a 150-basis-point increase. Gap’s net sales in the three months to August 3 were worth $3.72 billion, compared with $3.55 billion a year earlier.

By early afternoon in New York the shares were 3.1 per cent, or 69 cents, higher at $23.12.

Official figures from the Commerce Department on Friday showed another month of slowing price pressures in the American economy, with the Fed’s preferred measure of annual inflation holding at 2.6 per cent in July, compared with economists’ forecasts of a rise to 2.7 per cent.

Stronger than expected economic data from the world’s largest economy this week has boosted the dollar on international currency markets, with sterling being one of the casualties. On Tuesday the pound, which dipped 0.1 per cent on Friday to $1.318, hit a two-year high against the greenback, supported by investor expectations that the Bank of England will cut rates less sharply than the Federal Reserve in the coming months, after making its first reduction in August.

Traders on Friday slightly raised bets of a 25-basis-point rate reduction by the Fed next month to 69 per cent, with a 50 basis point cut possibility coming down to 31 per cent after the inflation report, according to the closely watched CME FedWatch tool. Markets expect at least three rate cuts from the US central bank before the end of the year.

The yield on the benchmark ten-year Treasury bills rose 0.6 basis points to 3.873 per cent, on track for its first weekly rise in three weeks. On Wall Street equity indices ended on a positive note ahead of the long Labor Day holiday weekend.

The Dow Jones industrial average clocked up its 26th record close of the year so far with a gain of 228.03 points, or 0.6 per cent, to 41,563.08 to bring its monthly gain to 1.8 per cent. The more broadly based S&P 500 ended 1 per cent higher on the day and up 2.3 per cent in August while the technology-dominated Nasdaq climbed on 1.1 per cent in the session and rose 0.7 per cent over the month.

The Fed targets a 2 per cent rate for its core personal consumption expenditures index, which measures the prices of goods and services Americans are buying, excluding food and energy.

July’s monthly and annual measures of the personal consumption expenditures index were in line with expectations, with the core figure rising by 0.2 per cent between June and July and the annual figure including food and energy remaining stable at 2.5 per cent.

Olu Sonola, head of US economic research at Fitch Ratings, said that a quarter-point cut to interest rates was already “set in stone” for next month, “but the Fed will still hope the jobs report next week does nothing to pile on the pressure for a 50-basis-point cut. Consumer spending continues to surprisingly exceed all expectations, a clear indication that the economy continues to be in good shape with solid above-trend growth.”

• What will happen if Trump wins the US election in 2024?

The absence of any inflationary surprises should allow the Fed to cut interest rates at its next meeting on September 18, which would mark the first monetary loosening since the pandemic. The US central bank aggressively raised the cost of borrowing from just above 0 per cent to a range of 5.25 per cent to 5.5 per cent in the past three years and has kept the Fed funds rate unchanged for the past 12 months.

Jerome Powell, chairman of the Fed, said last week that the “time had come” to cut interest rates to prevent a significant slowdown in the labour market and a rise in unemployment.

The ambitious goal follows the signing of a partnership with the British start-up ZeroAvia whose first trial flight of a 19-seater passenger aircraft powered by hydrogen fuel cells took place last month.

ZeroAvia, which has £150 million of backing from Bill Gates, Amazon, British Airways and Shell, hopes to fly its first Civil Aviation Authority-approved point-to-point trial from Cotswold Airport to another local airfield this spring. It is confident that it will have an 80-seater regional aircraft commercially operational by 2028.

Birmingham Airport wants to be ZeroAvia’s UK hub. The company is also working with Rotterdam Airport.

While the 19-seater is likely to be used initially for cargo, given its range of 300 nautical miles, Birmingham is eyeing potential passenger services to Glasgow, Aberdeen, Belfast and Dublin — so long as those airports follow Birmingham in installing hydrogen refuelling infrastructure.

An 80-seater zero-emission aircraft with a range of 1,000 nautical miles would open up round-trip flights around the UK and services to the Continent and the Mediterranean.

The government’s net zero plan wants all UK domestic flights to be zero-emission by 2040. Birmingham, which has its own decarbonisation plan, has signalled it wants to meet that target by 2033. “Birmingham Airport can be a central spoke in a green flight network in the UK, given that any domestic mainland destination will be reachable from the airport using our first systems in 2025,” Arnab Chatterjee, infrastructure director of ZeroAvia, said.

Simon Richards, Birmingham’s chief financial officer, said the airport envisaged UK regional zero-emission flights — with as yet unnamed operators — connecting to larger conventionally-fuelled international services.

ZeroAvia is retrofitting turboprops, 19-seater Dornier and in future 80-seater De Havilland Canada Dash 8-400s, with tanks of hydrogen which is converted by fuel cell stacks to energy taken to electric motors that power the propellers. The only emission is water. It is talking to potential new-entrant airframe makers to build all-new hydrogen aircraft of the future.

Sergey Kiselev, the ZeroAvia director overseeing development, said the company had decided to base itself in the UK rather than the US because at the time President Trump’s administration was not supporting such ventures. Innovate UK, Britain’s Aerospace Technology Institute and the government’s HyFlyer hydrogen programme stepped in. ZeroAvia has received upwards of £20 million of matched-taxpayer funding.

“The UK is a very important place for aviation and the southwest and Midlands have an aerospace supply base and huge engineering talent,” he said.

ZeroAvia claims to have orders for 1,000 hydrogen fuel cell aircraft from around the world including carriers such as American Airlines and United Airlines, ASL, the Irish cargo operator, and Monte Aircraft Leasing.

Ofgem, the energy regulator, wrote to suppliers on Wednesday, stating that it was beginning an “intensive consultation process” into the use of prepayment meters and whether “rules and guidance should be amended going forward”.

The review is due to take six weeks and will include evidence from energy suppliers, consumer groups and charities.

Ofgem will also invite individuals to submit evidence about their treatment by energy firms. It will announce a separate route for this next week.

The action comes after an undercover Times reporter found that British Gas was routinely sending debt collectors to break into customers’ homes and force-fit prepayment meters, even when they were known to be extremely vulnerable.

If families cannot afford to top up these pay-as-you-go meters, their heating or electricity is cut off.

• Exposed: How British Gas debt agents break into homes of vulnerable

Families forced on to the meters last month included a single father with three children. Others targeted despite freezing temperatures and rocketing energy prices included the mother of a four-week-old baby and a woman in her fifties known to have severe mental health problems.

The debt collection agents were given the incentive of bonuses when they force-fit prepayment meters.

Following publication of the Times investigation, Ofgem asked all suppliers to stop force-fitting prepayment meters. The suspension will last at least until the end of March, allowing for time to consider longer term changes to protect vulnerable customers.

Ofgem also issued a legal order banning British Gas from force-fitting the meters until it can prove it is complying with all its legal obligations.

Lord Justice Edis, one of the country’s most senior judges, has ordered courts to stop listing hearings to authorise warrants for energy companies to force-fit the meters in customers’ homes “until further notice”.

Centrica, which owns British Gas, apologised for its agents’ conduct and suspended the practice following an approach by The Times before publication of the findings.

Last year there was a surge in the number of applications to courts for warrants to force entry into customers’ homes and fit a prepayment meter.

Under Ofgem rules, forcing customers onto prepayment meters under warrant should only ever be a last resort, and should never occur when customers are “in very vulnerable situations”.

The regulator guidance suggests vulnerability could include being of state pension age, having a disability, a mental health condition, being pregnant, or having children under five years old.

In its letter to suppliers yesterday, Ofgem’s chief executive, Jonathan Brearley, said its review would “consider how the rules and guidance on the use of prepayment meters by suppliers apply in the current exceptional circumstances as well as whether these rules and guidance should be amended going forward”.

Brearley also indicated that all households may have to pay more in future to enable suppliers to recoup their costs if the suspension on forced prepayment meter installations leads to an increase in unpaid bills.

He stated that this was a “difficult balance”, adding: “If this debt cannot be recovered from some customers, then this increases costs for suppliers.”

Ofgem sets the energy price cap based on its assessment of the costs suppliers face and already includes an allowance for recovering “bad debt” or unpaid bills that are not expected to be recovered. Ofgem told suppliers that “if an adjustment is required, we will act quickly”.

At present, consumers are shielded from paying the full amount they would be charged under the price cap thanks to the government’s energy price guarantee, which subsidises tariffs so that a typical household won’t pay more than £2,500 a year. This is due to rise to £3,000 a year in April. In the second half of the year the energy price cap is forecast to fall below this level, meaning it will set the ceiling on bills once more.

Grant Shapps, the energy secretary, also wrote to energy suppliers in light of the Times investigation, asking them to urgently set out plans to identify customers who may have had prepayment meters wrongfully installed and to compensate them.

Last week, he said he was disappointed at the responses from the firms, many of whom had “failed to address” the issues he had raised.

“I am angered by the fact some have so freely moved vulnerable customers on to prepayment meters without a proper plan to take remedial action where there has been a breach of the rules,” he said.

Centrica said it had only used warrants as a last resort after several attempts to resolve issues with customers. It recently announced a £10 million fund for prepayment customers. A spokeswoman said: “Protecting vulnerable customers is an absolute priority.”

Tarry brings with him decades of experience at Tesco, where he played a pivotal role in shaping the grocer’s strategy and success. Now the industry is betting on him to navigate the challenges of a rapidly changing retail landscape and to return the century-old partnership to stability and growth.

For the employee-owned group, recent years have been anything but smooth. It grappled with the impact of Covid-19, which forced temporary store closures and disrupted its operations, and then losses swelled as the subsequent cost of living crisis added further pressure.

Consumers tightened their belts and discretionary spending on items such as homewares and fashion, staples of the John Lewis offering, declined. Waitrose suffered as even wealthier shoppers shunned the upmarket grocer in favour of cheaper alternatives such as Aldi and Lidl, the German discounters.

At the centre of this storm was Dame Sharon White, who took over as chairwoman in 2020, becoming the first woman and the first black person to lead the partnership. White was a leftfield choice, a civil servant who previously had headed Ofcom, the communications regulator, and had no previous retail experience.

However, as Sir Charlie Mayfield, her predecessor, argued at the time, “these are not conventional retail times, nor is the partnership a conventional company”. Instead, she had been hired as “an inspirational leader with the personal and professional skills to ensure the partnership continues to innovate and change”.

• John Lewis bets the house on a return to focusing on retail

White, 57, took on the top job just before Covid struck. Yet even without the challenges of navigating a business through a global pandemic, she already had a hard task ahead of her. Cracks had started to form at the partnership. She inherited a business struggling to find its footing in a modern retail age. It had been slow to respond to the rise of ecommerce, leaving it with too many physical shops and an oversized workforce. Unlike more agile competitors, John Lewis had clung to its traditional model, too afraid to upset its employees and customers, resulting in declining shopper numbers and unsustainable costs.

Moreover, White stepped in just after Mayfield had decided to drastically overhaul the management structure, eliminating individual bosses for John Lewis and Waitrose and creating seven divisions, all reporting directly to her. The internal shake-up had been intended to make the partnership more agile, but in the event it caused disruption as managers adjusted to new roles and responsibilities.

White waited until October 2020 to reveal her business plan, needing time to get to grips with the true impact the pandemic would have on the business and the wider industry. Her turnaround strategy was aggressive. There were cost-cutting measures, such as the closure of underperforming stores, the reduction of the workforce, a focus on streamlining operations and eventually dropping the “never knowingly undersold” price match pledge.

Those moves arguably were necessary, given the financial difficulties that the business was facing, but they were not without their critics. Some argued that the cuts were too deep, undermining the core values of the partnership, which had long prided itself on its commitment to employee welfare and customer service.

Others were critical that during the cost-cutting process, the retail business was not given the attention and support it desperately needed. Instead, the partnership was busy investing in new business areas, including housing, while funding was depleted.

White believed that for the long-term survival of the business, it was vital to create a new income stream and to reduce its reliance on traditional retail. Others disagreed. They argued that John Lewis had lost focus and should have been investing in upgrading its outdated retail operations, making them fit for the future. Someone with a background in retail, they said, would have done that.

Until recently, it seemed as though the critics had won. Instead of getting closer to White’s profit target of £400 million, which she promised would be reached by 2025, revenue slipped and profits turned to losses. Employee morale was lower than ever, the staff bonus was axed and it seemed as though there was no going back for the John Lewis Partnership.

But now, as White prepares to hand over the reins to Tarry, 57, green shoots have started to emerge. Market share at Waitrose has started to recover, thanks to a renewed focus on quality, innovation and value. John Lewis’s fashion and home departments have shown signs of improvement, too, with new collections that have been received well by customers and critics alike. Anna Murphy, the fashion editor at The Times, declared its latest fashion collection as “the best yet”.

• John Lewis Partnership rules out splitting operations

Customer service levels are improving, helped by investment in employee training. John Lewis said that there had been an overall uplift in customer satisfaction scores from 69 per cent last year to 71 per cent of shop visitors being very satisfied, the highest score since the pandemic. Waitrose jumped from 71st to 4th in the UK customer satisfaction index, ranking No 1 for food retail.

Though still a fraction of the £300 million-plus profits regularly reported less than a decade ago, the partnership made a pre-tax profit of £56 million in the year to January 7, having suffered a loss of £234 million the year before. The debt ratio improved to 3.4 times as of March, from 4.4 times in the previous year, thanks to improved cash generation. The company said it had sufficient liquidity of £1.7 billion in place to repay its £300 million bond, maturing in January.

Despite the criticism, White remains steadfast in her belief that the measures were necessary to secure the long-term future of the business. “Every chairman wants to leave the partnership in better shape than they found it and I believe I have achieved that. Back in profit. Strong cashflow. Debt at its lowest level in a generation. A million more customers. Improving customer satisfaction. Waitrose growing market share.”

She said she was pleased “to have steered the partnership through its most challenging period ever, with the support of a great team, and to have put in place solid foundations for its future success. It’s never easy, especially in an employee-owned business, and we’ve tried to make the changes in an open, transparent and humane way.” However, she added that: “In the end, these decisions have given us the firepower to invest in the business.”

So was the nation too quick to judge? One grocery executive said that might be so. “Sharon made some drastic but necessary decisions. She didn’t always get it right, but she was respected by employees and I do think she wouldn’t have been given such a hard time if she had come in with a retail background.

“The other thing worth noting is that John Lewis had a tough time during the pandemic and the cost of living crisis, but Marks & Spencer had been struggling for over a decade. We were all very quick to praise M&S for its turnaround efforts when things started to look up for the business. Maybe we should be more optimistic about John Lewis.”

• Shoppers revolt as Waitrose makes loo rolls smaller

According to another grocery executive, one of the core responsibilities is succession: “I’ve always thought it bizarre when someone sees the failure of an organisation after they leave as a measure of greatness. It’s the opposite.”

While White faced the herculean task of steering the retailer through a storm of challenges, Tarry arrives just as the cogs are beginning to spin in the right direction. With profits inching up and customer satisfaction on the rebound, he takes over a business no longer in crisis mode but still very much in need of a steady hand to guide it back to its former glory. Significant challenges remain and Tarry will need to navigate these carefully as he seeks to build on the foundations laid by his predecessor.

Who is Jason Tarry, the Tesco lifer about to lead John Lewis Partnership?

Jason Tarry, the seasoned executive set to lead the John Lewis Partnership into its next chapter, is no stranger to the rigours of British retail (writes Isabella Fish). With a career spanning over three decades at Tesco, he has become a well-known figure in the industry, admired for his business acumen and calm, considered leadership style.

Hailing from Kent, Tarry’s journey to the top began in the less-than-glamorous trenches of retail, where he started as a graduate trainee at Tesco in 1990. He quickly ascended the ranks, proving his mettle in roles that ranged from head of non-food to group chief commercial officer and eventually as chief executive of Tesco UK and Ireland.

His rise through the company was a testament to his understanding of the retail sector, a blend of hands-on experience and a keen eye for detail. His tenure as chief executive was marked by a focus on building market share and helping to navigate the company through the aftermath of an accounting scandal that had rocked the business. He also played a key role in reducing Tesco’s ranges by up to 30 per cent in what was described as “project reset” under Dave Lewis, the former group chief executive.

As he prepares to step into one of the toughest jobs in retail — chairman of the John Lewis Partnership — many will be watching to see how Tarry, 57, adapts his Tesco-honed skills to the employee-owned company.

Mitchell, whose name has been changed, used the government’s shared ownership scheme, which allows you to buy a portion of a home and then pay a reduced rent on the rest to a housing association. “It was really marketed as a firm step on to the housing ladder,” she said.

Mitchell, 47, paid off her £52,000 mortgage with some inheritance money in 2017 but said she would struggle to save enough to buy anything bigger than a flat in London, especially now that her rent and service charge have more than doubled from £360 a month in 2013 to £795.

Mitchell also thinks that such high costs, along with concerns about blocks of flats since the Grenfell disaster will put buyers off. Her flat has been unsellable since the 2017 fire because of its cladding, which is finally being removed.

“I’m in my late forties and want to be in a house with a garden, but I am stuck here,” Mitchell said. “It was supposed to help me move up, but I can’t. I haven’t benefited at all from the scheme.”

Shared ownership is not the only scheme that aimed to help first-time buyers on to the ladder, but many of the others have also proved disappointing. The Help to Buy equity loan scheme gave first-time buyers a 20 per cent loan (40 per cent in London) interest-free for five years. A total of £24.7 billion was lent out to finance 387,195 homes, but because it was only available on new builds it was criticised for artificially inflating house prices and developers were accused of cashing in. An investigation by Money last year revealed that one in eight properties had lost value by the time homeowners repaid their loans.

Help to Buy ended in March last year, but there are other schemes still available. We look at what they offer — and the drawbacks.

Introduced in the 1980s as a form of affordable housing, shared ownership is available to those with a household income of £80,000 or less — £90,000 in London. The idea is that homeowners initially buy a smaller stake in a property, typically 25 per cent, to make it more affordable and then increase that stake over time through what is known as staircasing. There were 17,126 such private sales in 2022-23 according to government figures, up from 7,734 in 2014-15. Some 7 per cent of first-time buyers used the scheme last year.

“Given that the deposit requirement tends to be 10 per cent of the share purchased, share ownership is relatively accessible even with low savings and higher mortgage rates,” said David Fell from the estate agency Hamptons.

But the scheme has been widely criticised. In March the levelling up, housing and communities committee said that shared ownership was “drastically failing to deliver an affordable route to homeownership for too many people”. It cited rising rents, high service charges and complex leases among the key issues.

Rent payments usually start at 2.75 per cent of the proportion of the property you do not own and rise every year, usually in line with inflation plus 0.5 percentage points.

• Here’s the one thing Labour could do to help first-time buyers

Floris ten Nijenhuis from the app Stairpay, which educates people on the long-term costs of shared ownership, says those who do not staircase (either because they cannot afford to or choose not to) may be paying more than private renters after about seven years. Only about 2 per cent of shared owners had staircased to 100 per cent last year, Hamptons said.

There are other costs to consider too: even if you only own 25 per cent of the property you are liable for all repairs and maintenance. You will also have to pay all the fees associated with homebuying each time you staircase, including legal fees. You will pay stamp duty on your initial purchase and when your share goes beyond 80 per cent.

Selling a shared ownership property can be tricky too. You can normally only sell the share you own, and housing associations may have stipulations about your buyer. You may have to sell it back to the association you bought it from.

Paula Higgins from the advice service the HomeOwners Alliance said: “For the first few years people are delighted because they’re not renting, they feel they have the security of owning somewhere. Then you see satisfaction start to drop.

“There needs to be more upfront information about the full life cycle of costs for shared ownership, not just for year one.”

In 2015 the Help to Buy Isa was introduced, then replaced by the Lifetime Isa in April 2017. Both accounts pay a 25 per cent government bonus on money saved towards your first home. You can save £200 a month into a Help to Buy Isa and up to £4,000 a year into a Lifetime Isa.

Unsurprisingly the accounts have been popular. The Help to Buy Isa was used to buy 601,476 properties worth a total of £107 billion between December 2015 and March, while 171,050 people have so far used £2.19 billion saved in Lifetime Isas to buy their first home.

But some savers have found that their accounts are not as useful as they hoped. Both have a limit on the value of the property you can buy: up to £250,000 for the Help to Buy Isa (£450,000 in London) and £450,000 for the Lifetime Isa. These thresholds have not increased since the accounts were introduced, though the average first-time buyer property price went up 40 per cent from December 2015 to £241,502 in June. If the £450,000 threshold had increased in line with this, it would be £630,000 today.

Lifetime Isa holders who want to buy a property above the limit must pay a 25 per cent penalty to withdraw their money, which means they lose their government bonus and some of their own savings. Penalties totalled £47.2 million in 2022–23. While there is no penalty on withdrawing money from the Help to Buy Isa, it has a lower house price limit.

Matt McKenna from the financial research site Finder said: “This is a ridiculous situation. A substantial number of people now face difficult decisions over what to do with savings they have carefully grown over years.”

Natalie Pringle wants to use the £25,000 she has saved in a Lifetime Isa to buy a home. But she lives in southwest London and is worried that she will not be able to find a property within the £450,000 limit. If she has to withdraw her money, she could lose more than £6,000, so she has stopped saving into her Isa.

“The penalties and price limit can make the account redundant in a lot of cases. If I had to pay a penalty, this would really set me back,” said Pringle, 35, who is a business development manager. “The scheme is intended to incentivise people to save but all the restrictions seem to go against its original purpose.”

In April 2021 the government introduced a mortgage guarantee scheme to encourage banks to offer mortgages to those with a smaller deposit.

The proportion of new mortgages taken out at between 90 and 95 per cent loan to value (LTV) fell from 4.15 per cent in the final quarter of 2019 to just 0.8 per cent a year later, according to the Financial Conduct Authority, the City regulator. These deals all but disappeared during the pandemic amid concerns about falling house prices and widespread defaults.

The scheme meant that banks could buy insurance on a 95 per cent LTV mortgage in case the borrower defaulted. Participating lenders include Barclays, Halifax, HSBC, Lloyds, NatWest and Santander.

But take-up has been low, with only 38,156 of1.03 million first-time buyer loans underwritten by the scheme between its introduction and March.

Part of the problem is that rates on low-deposit deals are usually much higher, so many first-time buyers would prefer to wait until they have a larger deposit. The best two-year fixed rate for someone with a 5 per cent deposit is 5.45 per cent from Monmouthshire Building Society. Monthly repayments on a £200,000 25-year mortgage would be £1,222.

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With a 15 per cent deposit the best rate falls to 4.69 per cent from NatWest. Monthly repayments on the same loan would be £1,133, saving £1,068 a year.

“This scheme did improve competition and choice, which is important, but borrowers still need to meet affordability assessments, which can be a challenge,” said Paul Broadhead from the Building Societies Association.