Today is rent day for thousands of UK retailers, as the British Retail Consortium continues its campaign for landlords to allow tenants to pay in monthly instalments.

The latest quarterly payments are due today, prompting speculation that some major high street retailers will struggle to pay their  rent for the next three months.

The BRC repeated its claim that the current regime could force thousands of businesses to the wall.

“This will be the toughest quarterly rents payments day for at least 18 years," said BRC director general Stephen Robertson. “The first few months of the year usually see the lowest levels of consumer spending [and] this year has been compounded by recession.”

He said the system of quarterly payments was “an anachronism dating back hundreds of years to the days when horseback was the fastest means of communication”.

However, a switch to monthly payments has met with resistance among landlords, with Liz Peace of the British Property Federation claiming landlords were already being as flexible as possible.