It comes after a report in Retail Week revealed last month that London's Oxford Street now has more empty units than the average British high street - with 42 of its 269 shops standing empty, giving a vacancy rate of 16 per cent.Ī total of 17,145 shops on high streets and other locations closed for good last year - the equivalent of 47 a day on average, according to the Centre for Retail Research. This remained the retail location with by far the lowest vacancy rate.

Retail park vacancies also improved to 8.7 per cent in the first quarter of 2023, which was down by 0.3 percentage points. The overall vacancy rate for the first quarter of 2023 and the separate High Street vacancy rate were both at 13.8 per cent and both unchanged from previous quarter.īut the BRC said there was better news for shopping centre store vacancies which fell to 17.8 per cent in the first three months of this year, down from 18.2 per cent in the last quarter of 2022.

Many vacancies in the capital's West End are now filled with American candy stores on short term leases. London's Oxford Street has also been hurt by economic hits such as the coronavirus crisis, with major brands including Topshop, Debenhams and House of Fraser all closing branches. In the North East, Hartlepool, Newcastle and South Shields have all suffered, while Stockton-on-Tees in County Durham had a 20 per cent vacancy rate in 2019 although this is now falling.īut shopping areas in the South have also been dealt a hammer-blow by the cost of living crisis - such as Margate in Kent, where some empty stores have been turned into classrooms.

Towns such as Wigan have seen major high street chains including Marks & Spencer, Debenhams, BHS, H&M and Next all shutter outlets in recent years. The overall vacancy rate in the first three months of this year stands at 13.8 per cent - the same as the previous quarter, the BRC said. Nearly a fifth of shops in the North East stand empty compared to one in 10 in the South, a new report reveals today.įigures published by the British Retail Consortium (BRC) lay bare the scale of the decline of Britain's high streets in the North compared to the South, with the highest number of vacant stores in the North East (17.5 per cent), Wales (16.5 per cent) and the West Midlands (15.8 per cent).īy contrast, the lowest vacancy rates are in London (11.1 per cent), the South East (11.3 per cent) and the East (12.8 per cent).

Playing to Win by Jaci Burton