The John Lewis Partnership losses for the 26 weeks ended 1 August 2026 reached a pre-tax figure of £124m, up from £88m in the same period a year earlier, as the group absorbed restructuring charges alongside a tougher trading environment on the high street.
The headline number, though, deserves unpacking. The Partnership’s loss before tax, bonus and exceptional items came in at £89m, against £34m the previous year. The gap between that and the £124m statutory figure is explained by £35m of exceptional costs, primarily restructuring charges and cloud technology modernisation. This is not a group haemorrhaging cash on its core operations alone; it is also paying the bill for a transformation it chose to accelerate.
That distinction matters if you are trying to judge whether the turnaround is working. The honest answer is: partially.
John Lewis Partnership Losses Reflect Investment as Much as Trading Weakness
Overall Partnership sales grew 2% to £6.3bn in the half, according to the John Lewis Partnership half-year results. Investment in brands was up 29% to £246m as the company pushed through store modernisations. Waitrose delivered first-half sales of £4.3bn, up 4%. Department stores dragged, with sales down 2% to £2bn.
Independent retail analyst Nick Bubb had expected an overall operating loss at the department store arm of around £80m; the reported figure came in at £83m. On the Waitrose side, he had pencilled in £105m of operating profit but got £103m, noting that ‘the heatwave brought higher supply chain costs’ and margin pressure from store refurbishment spending.
Jason Tarry, the Partnership’s chair, attributed the result to ‘continued investment in our transformation, a more challenging trading environment and the increased costs of doing business’. Greater national insurance contributions featured among those costs, alongside the operational burden of managing through successive summer heatwaves. JLP said it remains ‘cautious’ about H2, given economic uncertainty heading into the autumn.
The group is still mid-turnaround. Sixteen department stores and at least 20 Waitrose outlets have been closed; thousands of jobs have gone. The leadership of the department store arm changed again this summer, with Peter Ruis departing after less than three years and Will Kernan, the former boss of River Island, stepping in. The March bonus of 2% of salary, the first in four years, cost the group £35m and covered roughly 69,000 staff. That looks like a one-off confidence moment rather than a signal of sustained recovery.
Primark Prepares to Deliver, While ABF Shares Take a Hit
The other major story of the morning is Primark’s announcement that it will offer home delivery in Great Britain. Associated British Foods confirmed the move in a trading update, citing Primark’s ‘digital maturity, including the success of Click + Collect, and online market developments’. The group has acquired a highly-automated fulfilment facility in Sheffield to support the service.
What changed the economics? According to ABF’s trading update, chief executive George Weston pointed to higher delivery fees and tightened returns policies as the factors that made home delivery viable where it previously was not. No timetable or financial projections for the rollout were provided.
The market was unimpressed. Reuters reported that ABF shares fell more than 11% on 10 September 2026, extending year-to-date losses to nearly 16%, as subdued Primark trading and a forecast for higher losses in the sugar business overshadowed the home delivery announcement. Primark accounts for roughly 60% of ABF’s operating profit, according to Morningstar, which gives the retail arm’s trajectory an outsized influence on the group’s valuation.
ABF confirmed the Primark demerger is proceeding as planned, expected to be effected as a dividend demerger and to become effective before the end of 2027, subject to regulatory and tax approvals. George Weston will lead the retained food business; Eoin Tonge will head the newly independent Primark.
NATS Failure: A Millisecond That Cost Thousands of Flights
The NATS air traffic control failure that disrupted more than 2,000 flights across two days was caused by a software defect, according to NATS’s preliminary investigation report. The defect first appeared at 10:00am on 8 September 2026 but was not recognised as a serious problem for two and a half hours. A system restart did not begin until just after 3:15pm; UK airspace restrictions were not lifted until 7:30pm. The BBC reported that the fault occurred ‘in the space of a millisecond’, producing corrupted data. NATS had expected to handle around 8,000 flights on the day; EUROCONTROL records show only 6,094 were handled.
NATS chief executive Martin Rolfe told the BBC he would not resign, calling the defect ‘very, very obscure’. Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary called his position ‘untenable’. The government has given Rolfe a week to report on the causes.
What makes this sequence uncomfortable is timing. AeroCorner notes the Civil Aviation Authority formally closed the last of 34 recommendations from the August 2023 NATS failure on 19 June 2026, just 81 days before the 8 September incident. NATS confirmed the two failures are unrelated in cause; the proximity in time will make that case harder to sell to a sceptical travelling public.
