Christmas isn’t far away and plenty of Brits have already put in their Christmas day food orders and started buying Christmas gifts. Last-minute shopping can be stressful and you often can’t predict the holiday opening hours in stores. Large shops MUST close on Christmas Day, but what about Boxing Day? Express.co.uk reveals the full list of stores that will be CLOSED on Boxing Day.

Small shops in England and Wales (anything up to and including 280 square metres) can open on any day at any hour and there are no trading hours restrictions in Scotland.

Larger shops over 280 square metres MUST operate under restricted hours on Sundays and close completely on Easter Sunday and Christmas Day.

This excludes things like airport and railway station outlets, registered pharmacies, farms selling their own produce, and a few other exceptions, but most of your local shops will be closed on these holidays.

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Retail workers and their loved ones have been petitioning for the closure of stores on Boxing Day for a long time.

An online petition put forward to the Conservative Government between 2015 and 2017 argued that all retail should be closed for Christmas and Boxing Day.

The petition, which got 148,327 signatures of support, reads: “Christmas is a family time, one day is not enough time to see two sides of families, retail workers work extremely hard during the Christmas run up and only get one day.

“If only everywhere could be closed on boxing day! Some things are needed over the festive period, retail isn’t one of them.”

The topic was debated in parliament on December 12, 2016, and the Government finally closed it, concluding: “We do not believe it is for the central Government to tell businesses how to run their shops or how best to serve their customers.

“Therefore we are not proposing to ban shops from opening on Boxing Day.”

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