The executive chairman of athletic footwear and apparel retail group JD Sports, Andy Higginson, has said changes to minimum-wage levels and employers’ national insurance payments will add £7 billion to retailers’ annual costs in the UK.

Changes announced in the autumn will start to take effect in April. Speaking on BBC radio on March 24, Mr Higginson said these extra costs would hit the retail sector hard.

In addition to his role at JD Sports, Mr Higginson is chairman of representative group the British Retail Consortium. Before joining JD Sports in 2022, he had been the chair of the board of one of the UK’s largest supermarket groups, William Morrison.

He told the BBC that, in the face of the increases, retailers in the UK had “gone off the growth agenda” and were focusing instead on how to absorb the extra costs. He said: “Every retailer in the country at the moment is looking at job-cuts and at cutting back on investment for new stores.”