The sales impact or lack of it during the Christmas period could prove to be the tipping point for many retailers finding it too hard to compete for dwindling numbers of shoppers wanting to spend in store.

Latest figures suggest 20 per cent of festive shopping was carried out online, a new record and it will only continue in one direction.

Yet landlords continue to charge high rents in Oxford city centre while the Government is continuing to dodge the bullet of radically reducing business rates.

As a result, more and more established independent retailers such as Argenteus jewellers will shut up shop, unable to make sufficient profit to survive.

Even larger stores such as Debenhams, which occupies a prime site in Oxford city centre, pictured, are struggling.

Soon councils will be facing up to the question of what to do with rows of empty properties. Will they all become estate agents, cafes and pop-up shops?

Or is it time for a major rethink as to what can work for high street retail in the next decade?

I don’t have the answers but what is clear is that something needs to be done quickly to arrest this decline.

And instead of ignoring the inevitable, government at both local and national level needs to co-ordinate and come up with a realistic strategy for the future.