Massive Wave of Retail Store Closings Predicted. The demise of the British high street. FINAL_Economy Committee_empty shops report London Assembly. BeyondRetail2013. Sir Philip to close 260 loss-making Arcadia stores. Sir Philip said last year he was reviewing his property portfolio. Property agents say the announcement of the closures and provision could be a negotiating tactic to force landlords to cut rents as run out. In the next three years almost 500 leases in the Arcadia portfolio are due to expire. The group owns 2,500 stores in total. In the year to the end of August 2011 the Topshop to Bhs group made a pre-tax loss of £253m on sales of £2.6bn, down from £2.7bn in 2010.
Excluding exceptional items, of which the provision for store closures is one, the group made a £133m profit. Like other retailers Arcadia, which also owns Topman, Burton, Dorothy Perkins, Miss Selfridge, Wallis and Evans, has been hit by a sharp fall in consumer confidence. Briefing 160 senior Arcadia executives yesterday Sir Philip said it had been a "painful" year at times, but said that "we couldn't be working harder in a tougher environment". "We are still investing, we are still trying to grow this business," he said. 11-1402-understanding-high-street-performance.
British high street footfall drops 3.4% before Christmas retail rush | Business. Britain's high streets have suffered their biggest drop in shopper numbers for more than a year, according to a report that indicates a slow start to the festive retail season. The British Retail Consortium's latest numbers also showed a drop in footfall for out-of-town shops and for shopping centres, echoing sales data that has pointed to a tentative mood among Christmas shoppers. The BRC's figures, supplied by Springboard, revealed a 3.4% annual drop in footfall for high streets from September to November, the sharpest fall since August 2012. For November alone, footfall was down 2.9% on a year ago across all shop types.
This matched October's drop and was largely caused by a 4.2% fall in high-street shoppers. Helen Dickinson, BRC's director general, said the November fall "tallies with recent signs in our sales data that festive spending has got off to a slow but steady start". Q&A: What next for the British high street? Retailers gave a cautious welcome to news that a "dazzling" week before Christmas saw sales rise by 2.2 per cent compared with the last year. At the same time, professional service firm, Deloitte, said the total number of retailers in England and Wales falling into administration increased by 11 per cent to 183 last year. Channel 4 News takes advice from Maureen Hinton, lead analyst at Verdict Research, and other researchers to find out where the high street is likely to stand. What will the British high street look like in 12 months time? Retail analysts suggest the slow death of the traditional British high street will continue this year.
The leisure and entertainment sector - restaurants and cafes, books and music shops - will continue to see casualties as more and more people choose to stay in to eat. This could also be the year in which the value end of the clothing market begins to suffer, as they are dependent on high sales volumes. How might the picture vary regionally? Viewpoints: What should be done about Britain's empty shops? 11 September 2013Last updated at 09:38 GMT High Street vacancies remain "stubbornly high", according to a report from the Local Data Company. So what should be done about Britain's empty shops? The report showed that the average vacancy rate in the top 650 British town and city centres was 14.1%, down just slightly from the previous reading of 14.2% taken in February. Wales had the highest national vacancy rate, at an average of 17.5%, Scotland hit 14.9% and England 14.0%. Last week retail guru Mary Portas told MPs she had "taken a battering" from critics for attempts to revive High Street shops.
Critics of her review, which focused on encouraging independent start-ups and community-oriented businesses to replace chain stores that had moved to out-of-town locations, said it was too "nostalgic". BBC News has asked a number of experts what they think should be done about the UK's empty shops. Liz Peace, chief executive of the British Property Federation Continue reading the main story Liz Peace. Record online sales over Christmas, says BRC. 10 January 2014Last updated at 04:30 ET UK shoppers are ordering more online as retailers focus on web offerings, the BRC says A record amount of online shopping was done in December 2013, says the British Retail Consortium (BRC).
Close to one in five non-food items was bought online last month, according to the BRC survey. There was also a 19.2% growth in internet purchases from a year earlier, the fastest increase in four years. However, UK retail sales in total rose by just 0.4% on a like-for-like basis. The BRC said the figures represented a "respectable overall result". Clicks and bricks Online trading in general represented 18.6% of total non-food sales for the final month of 2013, an increase from 16.5% a year earlier. The BRC's director general, Helen Dickinson, said retailers had invested in their websites and improved delivery times, and added that the surge in the popularity and use of smartphones and tablets had also contributed to the rise in online retailing. 'Fragile recovery'
Retail Forecast for 2013-2015 - Centre for Retail Research, Nottingham UK. The Retail Forecast for 2013-2015 From the Centre for Retail Research "The sun has started to rise above the hill" ( (Rt Hon George Osborne, Chancellor of the Exchequer, 2013 [Elliot & Coates, 2013])) [As at 2 October 2013] The Forecast Our previous retail forecast for 2013 (retail growth of only 0.3% in real terms) was too pessimistic. The change does not mean a return to the 2.0%+ real growth that we saw between the mid-90s and the mid-00s, but the situation is now less bad and in some ways the economy is becoming better balanced.
Our revised GDP forecast for 2013 is 1.3% (though 1.5% may prove more accurate) and for 2014, 2.0%. Our retail forecast for 2013 in value terms is for growth of 3.9%; in 2014 3.4%; and 2015 3.4%-3.8%. Food and Non-food: in 2013 we expect food sales growth of 3.6% (values) and non-food sales growth of 4.1%. In 2014 we expect food volumes to grow by 1.0% and non-food by 2.0% whilst in 2015 food should grow by 1.1% and non-food by 2.0%. Fig 1 Fig 2 The Housing Market. UK economy: Unemployment figures explained by ONS. 12 June 2013Last updated at 09:15 GMT Employment and unemployment are among the most closely-watched economic indicators. But how are the figures drawn up? Who exactly is counted as unemployed? And why does ONS quote unemployment figures for a three-month period, when the number of Job Seeker's Allowance (JSA) claimants is given for a single month?
Some have questioned the way the Office for National Statistics compiles the figures. The answers lie with the Labour Force Survey, the huge continuous survey that ONS uses to measure unemployment (along with employment and economic inactivity). The unemployment figures use an internationally-agreed definition. To count as unemployed, people have to say they are not working, are available for work and have either looked for work in the past four weeks or are waiting to start a new job they have already obtained. Each quarter the LFS covers 100,000 people in 40,000 households chosen randomly by postcode. Put simply, it's a matter of resources.