Recession shakes up regional retail hierarchy
Published: 25 May, 2010
CACI's annual ranking of the UK’s top retail destinations underlines strength in Glasgow, Liverpool and Newcastle but more difficult times for Leeds and Birmingham.
CACI's Retail Footprint 2010 ranks retail centres by forecast expenditure. It shows that while London’s West End remains the Britain’s number one shopping destination by a long way, Glasgow is the country’s number two, just ahead of Birmingham by some £120m.
Paul Langston, associate partner - location strategy at CACI, who led the study explained: “Glasgow is proving a strong retail centre and resilient in the recession. There have been no fundamental changes in the Glasgow market in the past 12 months but nonetheless it has much better vacancy rates than Birmingham, which is now a ‘shopping struggler’. The only reasons the two cities are so close in expenditure terms is Birmingham’s larger population density and weaker surrounding retail centres.
“Liverpool has shown some success from the investments in Liverpool One and Newcastle has benefitted from the opening of the Eldon Square extension. Leeds, meanwhile, is struggling to compete against other similarly-sized cities and now desperately needs the Trinity Quarter development to come on stream.”
And in a separate analysis, CACI has produced a retail footprint table for the UK's outlet malls. Value Retail's Bicester Village emerges as the UK's number one outlet scheme, followed by Land Securities’ Gunwharf Quays in Portsmouth and the McArthurGlen outlet at Cheshire Oaks. Realm's Clarks Village at Street was fourth and its Freeport Braintree Outlet came fifth.
