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Identifying factors that influence vitality and viability

Identifying factors that influence vitality and viabilityCathy Parker, Nikos Ntounis, Simon Quin and Steve MillingtonPart of the ESRC funded high Street UK 2020 ProjectContents Introduction .. 2 Background .. 2 Project Aim .. 3 Literature Review .. 5 Methodology .. 6 The Delphi Process .. 6 Identifying the Top 25 Priorities .. 8 Results and Discussion .. 9 Get on with it! .. 9 Live with it! .. 10 Ignore it! .. 11 Forget it! .. 12 Impact and Implications.

Identifying factors that influence vitality and viability Cathy Parker, Nikos Ntounis, Simon Quin and Steve Millington Part of the ESRC funded High Street UK 2020 Project

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Transcription of Identifying factors that influence vitality and viability

1 Identifying factors that influence vitality and viabilityCathy Parker, Nikos Ntounis, Simon Quin and Steve MillingtonPart of the ESRC funded high Street UK 2020 ProjectContents Introduction .. 2 Background .. 2 Project Aim .. 3 Literature Review .. 5 Methodology .. 6 The Delphi Process .. 6 Identifying the Top 25 Priorities .. 8 Results and Discussion .. 9 Get on with it! .. 9 Live with it! .. 10 Ignore it! .. 11 Forget it! .. 12 Impact and Implications.

2 12 References .. 16 Appendix 1 Systematic Literature Review .. 21 Appendix 2 Delphi Participants .. 22 Appendix 3 201 factors .. 23 1 Acknolwedgements The authors gratefully acknowledge the support of the Economic and Social Research Council in funding this research (Grant number: ES/L005182/1) and the guidance of Ben Keegan when undertaking our systematic literature review. In addition, we would like to thank our 22 Delphi respondents and all our high Street UK partners for all their expertise and insight.

3 2 Introduction The purpose of this document is to report the progress of the high Street UK2020 (HSUK2020) project. Started in January 2014, HSUK2020 aims to bring evidence to 10 UK high Streets, to improve local decision making that will improve vitality and viability . The 10 partner locations are Alsager, Altrincham, Ballymena, Barnsley, Bristol (St George), Congleton, Holmfirth, Market Rasen, Morley and Wrexham. The report outlines the background to the project, the methods we have employed, the results we have found and a brief overview of how some of our partner towns are using these findings.

4 By undertaking a systematic review of the literature and, through adopting a more engaged model of scholarship, the project has identified 201 factors that influence the performance of the UK high Street. This has enabled us to classify the top 25 priorities for action our partner towns should focus on. Background The changing nature of retail in the UK brings many benefits to consumers, but has significant consequences for communities and retailers. UK town centres are experiencing a period of turbulent change. Whilst of retail spending took place in town centres in 2000, this fell to in 2011 and is forecast to be under 40% in 2014 (BIS, 2011).

5 15,000 shop units closed in UK town centres between 2000 and 2009 and a further 10,000 by 2011 (BIS, 2011). The Centre for Retail Research forecasts that this trend will continue and a further 27,000 shops will close in town centres by 2018, leaving total shop numbers in all locations in the UK at 220,000 (CRR, 2013). Some 315 medium or large retail companies, employing nearly a quarter of a million people, and with 26,075 stores between them, have failed since January 2007 (CRR 2014b). Town centre retail unit vacancy levels rose from 7% in 2008 to a peak of in 2012 (Wrigley and Lambiri, 2014) and many towns, particularly in the north and west of the UK experienced far higher rates.

6 Overall vacancy is now falling and was in August 2014 (LDC, 2014). Online retailing in the UK is now widely adopted and was forecast to account for of retail sales in 2014, the largest market share for any country (CRR, 2014). Leading department store group, John Lewis Partnership, reported in 2014 that online sales accounted for 30% of all sales by the group (Internet Retailing 2014). The total value of UK online sales in 2014 was estimated by IMRG to be 107 billion, a rise of 17% on the previous year (Internet Retailing 2014), though other researchers report considerably lower figures (CRR, 2014a).

7 Much growth has been driven by 138% expansion in M-commerce for 2013 (Internet Retailing, 2014). The recent shift from off-line to on-line channels is in line with other structural changes in retailing, such as the post 1970s shift from in-town to out-of-town provision. Academics 3 have been studying retail change for over forty years (see for example Hollander, 1960; Jefferys and Knee, 1962; Dreesman, 1968; Schiller, 1986; Brown, 1987; Fernie, 1997; Hart, Doherty and Ellis-Chadwick, 2000; Coca-Stefaniak et al, 2005; Burt, 2010) and its effect on traditional retail centres (Agergaard, Olsen and Allpass, 1970; Davies, 1984; Hallsworth and Worthington, 2000; Adams et al, 2002; Weltevreden, 2007, Wang 2011).

8 There has been a long tradition of studying the high street in geography (Dickinson, 1947; Smailes, 1953, Freeman, 1958) but these are largely normative studies. There is an emergent critical literature on high streets such as the study of declining high Streets being indicative of a broader deterioration of public space and local communities, diversification of retail geographies, gentrification and adaptive resilience (Dawson, 1988; Jackson, 2006; Gregson and Crewe, 2004, Hubbard, 2014, Wrigley and Dolega, 2011). Despite years of academic research, the high Street data and reports, as well as extensive media coverage, it seems to have had little effect on the ground; it is far from clear that retailers and local actors and agencies responsible for managing change on the high street know how to respond effectively.

9 For example, a headline from the Daily Mail (14th March 2013) reads, "Towns have spent just 7% of Mary Portas 10 million fund to rescue high and most of it went on reindeer and Peppa Pig costumes". Even where supportive local institutional structures and business practices exist to manage change there is no empirical evidence to demonstrate they are effective (Wrigley and Dolega, 2011). The difficulties localities face when planning for, and adapting to, change is in part due to the complexity and diversity of the problem (Peel, 2010).

10 Understanding the dynamic nature of retail is itself a challenge, there is a seemingly endless litany of change concerning retail formats (Morganosky, 1997, p269). The people who need to understand the resultant changes in spatial requirement, must also understand the complexity of forces that influence change (Clarke, Bennison and Pal, 1997; Hernandez, Bennison and Cornelius, 1998; Pioch and Byrom, 2004); the multi-disciplinary nature of the evidence base (Palmer, Owens and Sparks, 2006) and the multitude of stakeholders (Pal and Sanders, 1997) that comprise the high street if they are to play a proactive role in shaping the future of it.


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