But much of the damage has already been done, with retailers losing more than £100 million ($161 million) in four nights of looting and violence, an analysis found.
The riots began Saturday, spurred by the shooting death of a man that protesters said was killed by police.
It quickly spread to other parts of Britain.
Early Thursday, 16,000 police blanketed London's streets for a second consecutive night.
And although British Prime Minister David Cameron authorized police to use plastic bullets and water cannons, they weren't needed, according to London's Metropolitan Police.
An analysis conducted by the Centre for Retail Research on behalf of price comparison website Kelkoo found that retailers lost £80 million ($36.2 million) in sales.
They also lost £17.4 million ($28.1 million) in looted stock, and face £43.5 million ($70.3 million) in repairs, the analysis said.
The British Chamber of Commerce has not yet put out any figures.
The total could skyrocket to £520 million ($840 million) over the next year, the analysis said, if tourists decide to take their business elsewhere.
By early Thursday, London's Metropolitan Police Service had arrested 888 people in connection with the violence and charged 371. Police in West Midlands reported 1,333 arrests.
In London's Tottenham neighborhood, where the violence had it genesis, the focus shifted to cleanup.
Groups handed out brooms to residents, and hundreds took to the streets Wednesday to sweep up broken glass and debris.
Sarah Driver-Jowitt, 37, who lives in an 18th-floor apartment in the Clapham Junction area, joined them.
"I feel really strongly that the only way to respond to disorder is with civil order," she said. "They're just a bunch of people who find it exciting to be destructive."
Streets were largely closed off to cars and pedestrians, said CNN iReporter Spike Johnson.
"Riot vans were lined up in the side streets, council workers repaired roads and shop fronts, and squads of police hung around en masse," he said. "Residents milled around in shock at the destruction, some were very vocal about their loss."
In West London, young Sikhs stood guard outside their temple. North of the city, in Enfield, local residents chased after suspected looters. Riot police faced off not with looters but with local residents whose anger verged on mob violence.
"My officers need to focus on rioters and looters, not those vigilantes," said Steve Kavanagh, deputy assistant for the London Metropolitan Police. "The ones that help us are the community representatives who go and speak to people from their community and get them away and get them home, not people who threaten violence on anyone coming into their community."
Police said residents could help them by identifying photographs of looting suspects. The Metropolitan Police and other departments posted surveillance photos online.
In Birmingham, the father of a man who was killed in a hit-and-run incident pleaded for calm. Tarik Jahan's son was one of three men who were mowed down by a car while protecting local businesses from looters, residents said.
Though police had not announced any link between the rioting and the incident, they said they were treating it as a murder inquiry.
"I lost my son," Jahan told a crowd of more than 1,000 that had flooded the neighborhood. "Blacks, Asians, whites. We all live in the same community. Why do we have to kill one another? What started these riots, and what's escalated them? Why are we doing this? I lost my son. Step forward if you want to lose your sons. Otherwise, calm down and go home. Please!"
The men -- British Pakistanis -- were returning at 1 a.m. Wednesday from prayers to a gas station they were protecting when they were hit by the car.
The violence comes against a backdrop of austerity measures and budget cuts. But Cameron, community leaders and police have repeatedly pointed to a criminal, rather than political, motivation for the looting.
Analysts say a mix of economic and social tensions has been at play in the unrest, with deprivation a key factor. Those seen taking part in rioting and looting have been from diverse ethnic backgrounds and span a wide range of ages, and many are young.
The violence began Saturday after a protest over the August 4 shooting death of a man in an incident involving police in north London.
Officers from Operation Trident -- a Metropolitan Police unit that deals with gun crime in the black community -- stopped a cab carrying 29-year-old Mark Duggan, a black man, in the working-class, predominantly Afro-Caribbean district of Tottenham during an attempted arrest, the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) said.
Soon after, shots were fired and Duggan, a father of four, was killed. Shooting deaths are rare in England.
The man's family and friends, who blamed police for the death, gathered peacefully Saturday outside the Tottenham police station to protest.
The protest soon devolved into violence as demonstrators -- including whites and blacks -- tossed petrol bombs, looted stores and burned police cars.
On subsequent nights, the violence spread to other areas of Britain. Police characterized the disorder as "copycat criminal activity" by people intent on looting and destruction.
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