In a poll conducted by SmallBusiness.co.uk, more than half said that trade was starting to improve or had begun to plateau.

Andy Percival, owner of The Property Search group, says that although business hasn’t started to get better, it is no longer in a ‘freefall’ situation. ‘Last year was so scary it felt like things were going backwards every month. We had to make two sets of redundancies and put people on short-time working. Now it’s not as bad,’ he says.

‘It probably won’t be until spring next year that things will actually improve. However, other people I speak to in the industry agree that things are not as scary as they were at the end of last year,’ adds Percival.

Of the 110 respondents, 48 per cent said that business was getting worse.

This follows a report by the British Retail Consortium that said April saw an increase in sales of 4.6 per cent compared with last year.