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Shop closure North-South divide widens

The number of shops that closed across the North has increased while the Midlands and South East have managed stem their closures.

A national analysis of over 2,000 town centres and retail parks in 2013 showed vacancy rates were below 14% for the first time in four years.

Huge regional variations were stark as the North West fared worst with a 17.3% vacancy rate and a number of North East town centres were shown to have 25% vacancy.

Across the country there was over 50,000 empty shops, at the time of survey.

Shopping centres continued to have the highest overall vacancy rate at 15.4%, followed by large (13.4%) and medium (11.9%) town centres, small town centres (9.2%)and retail parks (8.9%).

Matthew Hopkinson, director at the Local Data Company, said: “2013 was a pivotal year for our town centres. It showed stabilisation of vacancy rates at a national level and saw the lowest vacancy rate recorded since mid 2010. Along with other key indicators such as house prices, GDP and unemployment you would not be wrong to identify 2013 as the year that the UK’s economic recovery began.

“Nationally this may be the case but what is clear from LDC’s latest report on vacancy rates, ‘Divide and Rule’, is that there is a significant and growing divide between the north of the country and the south.

“In addition, we are seeing greater concentration of the best retail and leisure destinations in fewer centres, be they large out of town ‘shopping parks’ or the increasing number of ‘mega malls’ of which Trinity Leeds was the latest example to open in 2013.

“Of these ‘all inclusive’ destinations there are now approximately 25 where the consumer gets all of the experiences, offer and variety that they demand. So what of the hundreds of towns that sit in the shadow of these places?”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Tom Keighley .