Lister Horsfall owner fears business rates and rents stifle British high street
Fourth generation family jeweller Lister Horsfall has been serving the people of Halifax since 1902, but its fourth generation owner Nick Horsfall is mindful of the headwinds that modern retail faces.
Speaking to Watch Insider as part of a forthcoming wide-ranging interview, Horsfall pointed to government intervention and exorbitant leasing costs as being of particular concern.
“Unfortunately, the high street will continue to have its own issues unless something drastically changes in terms of business rates and rent,” he said.
“It’s a shame that there’s so much risk to having bricks and mortar retail now for people that might have a passion project and decide to open a store as they’ve always wanted to do. There’s too much risk. Unless that changes and the high street comes back, I think we will just have to overcome all these different challenges.
“The network at our level is fairly static for now, but, generationally, there will be certain retailers that may cease to exist once they retire,” he continued.
One of the ways that Horsfall future-proofs his family business is by learning from his peers in the industry and exchanging ideas for best practice.
“I’ve been very fortunate to go behind the scenes in a lot of amazing businesses,” he said. “You go to Weirs and you see how they do it, or Lunn’s in Belfast, which is just a behemoth of a business, and see how they’ve done it. You pick the bits that make you think: ‘We should do that,’ and you can also pick the bits that you don’t want to do.”
The full in-depth interview with Nick Horsfall will be published in the forthcoming June 2026 edition of Watch Insider.
