Investors cheer as property giant British Land resumes paying dividend and sees strong pickup in sales at its retailers

Property giant British Land today defied the doommongers by announcing it would resume paying a dividend to investors and said its shop tenants have been seeing improving sales.

Footfall - the number of people visiting stores on its properties - was running 21% ahead of where the group thought it would be, and their sales were running at 90% of where they were a year ago, figures for the second quarter of its financial year showed.

It said: "Open air, out of town retail parks were driving the outperformance, playing a key role for retailers."

Despite their troubles earlier on in the pandemic, June rent collections came in at 98% from offices and 57% from retail, meaning British Land got in 74% of its rents in total. For September, it has already collected 69% of its rents, made up by 91% in offices and 50% in retail.

While the retail collections were still weak, that marked an improvement as shoppers ventured out during the summer months. Non-essential retail was allowed by the government to reopen in June, since when footfall has progressively improved.

A total of 84% of retail tenants have now reopened, British Land said.