Eighteen high street shops are shutting a day
You know I increasingly wonder if its not time to face up to the inevitable and accept that the traditional high street is dead. I can see lots of other potential dynamic approaches to it – but like the regular fascination with Marks and Spencer’s results we keep coming back to the issue of town centres with corrosive stories like this – which it seems to me serve no useful and often, even if inadvertently, a malign purpose.
Here we go then – the latest revelations about a shop near you tell us:
Town centre stores are shutting down at a rate of 18 a day across Britain, according to figures.
More shops are closing than opening with clothes stores, video and photography retailers suffering the hardest, while charity shops, bookies and cheque cashing outlets continue to grow.
The data from the PricewaterhouseCoopers and the Local Data Company also reveal that the South East and East Midlands suffered the hardest in the first six months of the year, with both seeing a net fall in stores over the period, while Yorkshire performed best with a slight increase.