Tag: Highstreet

High Street Innovation Fund remains redundant

Posted on March 14, 2013 by - News

highstreet South endA government fund set up to help breathe life back into empty shops has been neglected.

According to Freedom of Information requests seen by the BBC, the £10 million pot, named the High Street Innovation Fund, has only seen seven percent of money spent since it was set up a year ago.

The money was awarded to 100 councils with the worst affected High Streets in England, but of the 72 councils that responded to the FOI, 47 percent said they had spent a dime and the BBC worked out around £519,363.22 had been spent.

The government tried to make excuses, telling Aunty that it preferred the money was spent
“strategically and wisely” rather than quickly and wasted.

Earlier this month the BRC and London Assembly called for more action to be taken to keep shops alive, asking for tax breaks and pop up shops to help fill vacant spaces and attract footfall.

However, it seems even with cash in their back pockets no-one wants to comply.

The Freedom of Information requests were submitted by the independent retailer, Paul Turner-Mitchell, who claimed that the money that had been spent hadn’t fulfilled the brief of bringing life back into empty shops.

He said one council spent £10,900 on Christmas lights, while another spent £10,038 on a train station ramp. Swale Borough Council in Kent spent £164.60 on a snow machine, while only Wyre Forest District Council used the cash properly, splashing out £12,000 on bringing 10 empty shops back into use.

And there was more bad news for the high street with French Connection announcing consumer confidence had spelled out poor financials for 2012.

In the year to January 31, the retailer made an underlying pre-tax loss of £7.2 million, compared to the £4.6 million profit the previous year.

The company blamed costs from the closure of underperforming stores, and a £2 million goodwill impairment.

“Emergency measures” required to fix London’s high streets

Posted on March 13, 2013 by - News

highstreet“Emergency measures” must be put in place to improve the state of the high street, the London Assembly has said.

In its Open for Business report, the organisation said a vicious cycle on the high street has led to an increase in empty shops across the capital – up five percent to 3,400 in the past two years.

Businesses should be encouraged to open pop-up shops in vacant premises to help boost struggling high streets, a London Assembly report said today.

It said outer London high streets were particularly struggling because of tough economic conditions and changes in the retail industry, as people chose to shop at out-of-town centres and online.

However, it also blamed the number of vacant shops as a contributor to the decline, claiming these stores discouraged shoppers, and led to the closure of other retailers that might otherwise have survived.

The Committee has now said it wants immediate action from the Mayor, the Government and local boroughs.

It claims businesses should be encouraged to open pop-up shops in vacant premises to help boost struggling high streets. It also wants an expansion of small business rate relief paid for through a reduction in landlord’s rate relief on empty properties and a new register of owners of vacant shops so landlords can be easily traced.

The report also sets out other ideas to boost high streets, including improving accessibility especially for walkers and cyclists and prioritising turnover of car park spaces over maximising income.

Andrew Dismore AM, Chair of the Economy Committee, said: “The Mayor, the Government and local boroughs need urgently to follow our recommendations to bring empty shops back into use, stop the rot and so help our local high streets thrive again.“

The Committee also suggests boroughs should have powers to control any plans for betting shops, payday loan shops or pawnbrokers, to encourage more diversity in London’s high streets.

Highstreet sales for Feb hit three year high

Posted on March 5, 2013 by - News

highstreet South endFebruary brought with it a breath of fresh air for the high street, with figures showing sales grew at their fastest rates in years.

In its latest report, the British Retail Consortium (BRC) said dry weather last month encouraged people to venture out, with figures rising by 2.7 percent on the previous year and marking the fastest growing rate in three years.

Electrical goods were said to fuel the figures with the BRC describing these as the growth engine of the high street, with “big ticket goods and items for the home recovering particularly well”.

Despite the horse meat scandal, food grew by one percent, although frozen burger sales fell in favour of ingredients to make products from scratch.

The organisation pushed once again for changes in the upcoming Budget to ensure the high street continued to dig its way out of despair, claiming that the government had to realise that retail is central to generating growth and jobs critical to the UK’s economic recovery.

However, it pointed out that weak consumer confidence was the real and present obstacle, and as a result the Chancellor had to create a Budget that left people with “more money in their pockets and the confidence to spend it and retailers with the means to invest”.

It also reiterated that if the proposed rise in business rates went ahead then retailers would be placed under “inexorable pressure”.

The BRC figures contrasted with a recent CBI survey which reported that food stores suffered their worst performance for five years in February.

Although the BRC painted a rosier-than-usual picture, high street staple Debenhams recently issued a profit warning, claiming the bad weather in January could dent its margins.

It said that earnings would miss expectations and that underlying revenues were 10 percent lower in the affected fortnight, compared with a five percent rise over the festive period.

Revised profits for the six months to 2 March will now stand at around £120 million, against £128.5 million a year earlier and City forecasts in the £131 million area.

Tourists flock to UK high streets

Posted on February 27, 2013 by - News

highWhile Brits are clutching tightly onto their purse strings, their foreign counterparts seem to be happy to splash the cash on the UK high street.

In a survey, VisitBritain found that overseas visitors had splurged a record £18.5 billion during their visits to the UK,  up seven percent year-on-year from 2010.

The organisation said that this amounted to 25 percent of all expenditure by overseas visitors on the UK’s high streets.

The figure was a refreshing change from the doom and gloom spelled out in recent retail surveys, which continue to show Brits are reluctant to splash their cash on shopping.

Most recently a survey from CBI suggested that seven percent of retailers saw an increase in their volume of sales in the year to February and 29 percent reported a reduction.

However, it doesn’t seem dismal weather and high inflation are putting holidaymakers off.

According to VisitBritain, the majority of the shopping spend was on clothes, with an estimated £2.3 billion generated by fashion-conscious foreign tourists. Many visitors also bought souvenirs, gifts and household goods, accounting for around £1.6 billion.

Of the 18 million visitors, the French were the  most prolific shoppers with over two million trips, followed closely by 1.63 million Germans, 1.63 million Americans, 1.3 million Irish and 1.1 million Spanish.

BRC calls on Osborne to boost the high street

Posted on February 20, 2013 by - News

ossyThe British Retail Consortium (BRC) has laid down the gauntlet to George Osborne, urging him to use the budget to save the flagging high street.

The organisation has said that changes such as freezing business rates and cutting bureaucracy could go some way to helping the high street recover, after a tough couple of years.

Yesterday, a separate report by the Local Data Company (LDC) found that the percentage of empty shops in the country’s 650 most popular high streets nationally hit 14.2 percent – roughly 35,500 vacant properties – in December.

Analysts also warned that this number could rise as a result of big brands such as HMV and Jessops going into administration.

Now the BRC has waded into the ongoing crisis demanding that something is done. It said in a report, written in partnership with Oxford Economics, that the retail industry made an “essential contribution” to investment, jobs and growth.

However, operating costs within this industry have risen by a fifth since 2006 and it is centrally-driven costs that have risen most rapidly.

Costs of doing business are claimed to have increased by 21 percent to £20 billion since 2006, while annual operating costs have shot up by from £96 billion to £116 billion, the BRC said.

However, it pointed out that over the same period retailers sales values increased by just 12 percent meaning that the industry faced job losses and store closures.

In its submission, ahead of next month’s budget, the BRC has now said the Chancellor must intervene to support jobs and growth. It wants to see business rates frozen in April 2013 as well as utility bills cut, which the company said will help businesses stay on premesis.

A ‘One in, Two Out’ regulation, which is said to ensure any regulations being scrapped in one sector are replaced with new rules is also being pushed.

The organisation also wants to see a central coordination on implementation of the Portas Review recommendations.

John Lewis culls managers to focus on online

Posted on February 15, 2013 by - News

axeJohn Lewis has become the latest company to wield the axe, announcing that it will be slashing 325 department manager jobs in a bid to focus more on its online growth.

The company, which was hailed by the government as a model of “responsible capitalism” for the whole economy, has made the decision to chop these jobs as it moves to focus on it its online offerings.

It has set up its Retail Revolution’ plan in a bid to ensure it stays ahead of the game and doesn’t end up in the same black administration hole as some of its competitors.

However, this won’t be any consolation to the staff who are set to lose their jobs, in the biggest cut made by the retailer since 2009 when it culled 700 call staff jobs.

Each John Lewis has about 10 department store managers looking after sections such as womenswear, beauty or furnishings. In a bid to cut costs John Lewis is planning to replace these with one or two more senior managers in 28 of its 40 stores.

They have given those in question a month to put their views and proposals forward as to why they should remain at the company before a  90-day constitution in March.

Last month the company hinted that online was where it wanted to be, appointing Mark Lewis as online director. It said at the time it hoped that Mark, who had previously been CEO at Collect+ and spent six years at eBay in roles including UK managing director and European marketplaces director, would continue the growth and development of its online business.

High street footfall drops

Posted on January 22, 2013 by - News

highShoppers on the UK’s high street are continuing to decline, recent figures from the British Retail Consortium have shown.

One retail analyst has suggested the drop is partly thanks to a vicious cycle, where stores are forced to focus on their online efforts – but neglect shop fronts as a result.

The British Retail Consortium (BRC) released figures showing that shopper numbers had fallen by 1.2 percent in December, compared to the same time in 2011.

Shopping centres reported the greatest fall with a 2.8 percent decline, followed by out-of-town retailers, with a one percent fall, while high street locations saw footfall stumble by 0.5 percent.

The BRC said that the decline for the month as a whole came despite a rise of 7.5 percent in shopper numbers in the immediate week before Christmas.

The figures coincided with data released by the Office for National Statistics last week, which found that, although UK retail sales grew 0.3 percent in December, this figure was the lowest rise on record since 1998.

Patrick O’Brien, a retail analyst at Verdict, said there are a number of factors at play.

“Some shoppers stay away by online shopping, and this has let to retail chains investing less in their stores which in turn has made them less attractive creating a vicious circle,” he said, speaking with ChannelEye. “As a result, some high streets are looking very shabby indeed, and shoppers are tending to make one big trip to destination shopping centres such as Westfield Statford instead of several trips to the high street.”