The discount fashion chain store that became a success story on high street has had its bubble burst.

Primark, whose expansion drive has placed them on many British shopping lists, has reported slow summer sales as consumer confidence took a battering.

Shares in Associated British Foods (AB Foods), the firm’s parent group, fell 1.5 per cent as the news became known of marked slowdown in sales growth.

While full-year budgets and profit earnings for the retailer are still on track to beat forecasts, Primark warned that tough times lie ahead as increased living costs and the impending VAT changes would spell trouble times in 2011. The fashion industry is now bracing itself for the next round of sales updates from fellow high street staples Next and Debenhams, due out next week, with analysts anticipating that similar grim outlooks will be commonplace.

The Primark chain, which consists of 204 retail outlets, makes up one-third of the group’s profit at AB Foods. Its like-for-like sales slowed in the three months till mid-September by around 4 per cent, meaning the year now sits at an increase of 6 per cent following the 8 per cent first half performance.

John Bason, AB Foods finance director, said that the previous fourth quarter sales, made longer by an Indian summer in 2009, meant that the last quarter showed a decline of closer to ten per cent. Bason added that Primark would remain cautious in the way it handled the outlook and the UK consumer.

The Crown Estate has shortlisted bids for part of London’s fashionable West End.

Crown Estate, the property manager of the British monarchy, has collected a shortlist of hopeful bidders for an asset stake in around 25 per cent of Regent Street, the historic shopping strip in the trendy inner-west district of the capital.

A limited number of bidders will be part of detailed discussions ahead of the partial sale of the street according to a statement released by the management group today, although the identity of the bidders has been kept a secret. The strip in question has been part of ancestral land and property holdings that were originally exchanged by the monarchy back in 1760 for annual payments.

Several pension fund and sovereign wealth funds are believed to be vying for the area in question, which marks the second time that the Crown Estate has attempted to generate income towards a redevelopment of Regent Street worth around £750 million ($1.15 billion). An attempt to create a fund to off sell units was blocked by the corporate board in 2009 after it was labelled overly complex.

The district of Regent Street, situated between Oxford Street and Piccadilly Circus, is the biggest asset for the Crown Estate, recently valued at £1.6 billion. The estate owns the freehold rights to Regent Street, which was one of London’s largest ever construction projects, completed in 1825. Since then, some of the biggest global companies have made their home on the street, which separates trendy Soho from blue-chip Mayfair, including Hamleys, Burberry and Apple.

Leading UK retailers including Asda and Tesco are calling for a review of underage sales legislation.

A reform of laws governing the sale of cigarettes, alcohol and a variety of other products has been demanded by British retailers, who claim that existing rules are too complicated.

The group of retailers, which operate more than 250,000 outlets across Britain including independent stores numbering in their thousands, has urged the government to review and streamline the current regulations. Presently, there are 18 separate pieces of documentation that govern sales of items to underage children, which retailers claim are far too complex and should be combined into one, single, over-arching piece of legislation. Retailers are also calling for trade bodies and local regulators to grow stronger partnerships to tackle the problem.

Increasing pressure has been placed on retailers to tackle the problems of underage drinking and knife crime at the point of sale. However, they believe they are being singled out for what is a community issue. They also suggest that the complexity of the regulations, while increasing staff training and vigilance, has done little to protect their employees in the event of prosecution.

Chairman of the CBI’s Consumer Affairs Panel, Geoffrey Budd, said that using retailers as a part of the solution rather than the source of the problem would be far more effective in tackling issues.

On the move shoppers take note; leading UK supermarket giant Tesco is to launch the country’s first drive-thru store.

Aimed squarely at those short on time, the drive through facility will also cater to people who neither want to make the weekly shopping trip into the mall themselves, nor shop online and wait for the delivery.

Instead, the new service will allow customers to pay a flat fee of £2 to be directed to a dedicated store area at a specific time and collect their purchases without ever having to leave the comfort of their vehicle. The first of the stores will be run as a pilot and will debut at Baldock’s Tesco Extra store in Hertfordshire. If all runs smoothly, then Tesco will roll out the initiative nationwide, though as yet no time frame has been put forward.

The Tesco dotcom will oversee the running of the service, and customers will still order their groceries online as they do now using the Tesco internet shopping facility. The only different is that rather than select home delivery, they will instead choose the Click and Collect option. By doing so, they will be provided with a two-hour collection window during which they are able to collect their purchases at any time. All that needs to be done on arrival at the store is head to the reserved area of the carpark and show a staff member the reference details of their online purchase and their goods will be loaded directly into their vehicle.

The Grooveshark music streaming application has been removed by Apple just days after it’s much anticipated release.

The app led to a major entertainment company launching a complaint, as the ink was still drying on the contract.

Launched around August 11, Grooveshark’s iPhone application had been approved by Apple according the director of marketing and business development, Vishal Agarwala. However, it was only five days later that Agarwala received a letter from the client in regards to the complaint. In the letter, Apple said that Universal Music Group UK complained, and subsequently the app would need to be withdrawn from retail stores. Grooveshark is in competition with other streaming services such as Spotify to provide digital music services.

The Grooveshark online blog said the company was totally surprised by the letter and will do everything they can to fix the problem and get the App Store restocked. Grooveshark said its biggest worry was the potential impact on the customer, who they called ‘loyal awesome users’. Luckilly, the app itself is still operational for those who managed to download during the five day period.

The exact nature of the Universal Music Group complaint has not yet been revealed, but music by artists such as Bon Jovi, 50 Cent and Amy Winehouse, all from Universal, was still available on the Grooveshark website. The provider said it would comply with any request made under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) to withdraw its products.