07:28 Thursday 3rd September 2015
BBC Radio Cambridgeshire
DOTTY MCLEOD: There’s further signs of improvement in the health of the UK high streets. New figures show another small year-on-year fall in the overall number of empty shops, but there’s been a sharp increase in the number of shops lying empty for more than three years. These figures come from the Local Data Company. The Director there is Matthew Hopkinson.
MATTHEW HOPKINSON: Having been empty for three years and with a balance between online and shopping in store, we know that they’re no longer required. So now’s the time that the Government and local authorities and landlords need to make a decision and change them, either back into workplaces, or into residential, or indeed knock them down.
DOTTY MCLEOD: Nationally nearly 10,000 shops have been unoccupied since 2012. Dr Tim Denison is Director of Retail Intelligence at IPSOS Retail Performance. He says the problem is oversupply. In other words there’s more units available than demand requires.
Continue reading “Changing the High Street”