While the trading statements for Christmas 2015 are not all in yet, some clear trends in retailer performance over the crucial final quarter have already emerged.

The first, and possibly least surprising, is that the more money was spent on the internet than last year - particularly around Black Friday. With both the ONS and BRC data pointing to a flat Christmas in terms of sales volumes, and the Experian footfall data showing a sharp downturn in footfall in December, the data from Visa showing 23% pick-up in sales in December leads us to conclude that most if not all of that pick-up was online.

However, now that most retailers are firmly in the omnichannel world, the argument over whether it was a good or bad Christmas for online or offline is relatively irrelevant - they key thing is whether sales and margins improved across the board.

The second trend that is becoming apparent is that the gentle housing market recovery is feeding through into improving sales in the DIY and bulky good sectors. While this segment is often more focused on Easter than Christmas, there have been some strong trading number recently from Homebase, Topps Tiles, Dunelm and Robert Dyas. We delved into the linkage between housing turnover and retail warehouse sales in more detail in our last retail warehouse bulletin, but this looks like a sector to watch in 2016.

Broadly we expect that the positive consumer environment will lead to steady growth in spending and retailer turnover in 2016. However, the question around margins is more tricky. Low oil prices will undoubtedly help retailers a little, whether they manage their own distribution networks or not. But the hangover of unsold Autumn stock, the new minimum wage and impending business rates revaluation will however act as drags on margins in both the short and medium term.

This will place further pressure on some segments of the market, and we do expect to see more retailer failures this year than last. However, vacant units in the right locations will not stay vacant for long, and we expect to see a steady trickle of new entrants to the UK high street, either from the internet (as retailers like Pink and The White Company open stores) or from international markets.