Reconfiguration and economic performance of British retail centres in the post-pandemic era

The UK retail landscape has undergone a profound change in past decades with popular debates largely focusing on decline of the traditional retail spaces. This, predominantly driven by technological advancement and corresponding changes in consumer behaviour, was exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic and the subsequent disruption to supply chains and cost of living crisis. This study provides a comprehensive, data-driven descriptive analysis and new evidence on the transformation and economic performance of British retail centres over the five-year pre- and post-pandemic period (2019–2023), which is a crucial period offering a valuable perspective within three different periods: pre-pandemic, the Covid-19 pandemic and the initial post-pandemic ‘recovery’. Using longitudinal retailer occupancy data, this study presents a picture of the British retail landscape that is far from uniform, and shows that the decline was predominantly driven by ongoing trends of digitalisation within retailing and services and exacerbated by the temporary closure of ‘non-essential’ shops during the pandemic. Our findings also provide empirical evidence that Covid-19, when combined with pre-existing trends, prompted further demise of many ‘traditional’ retailers on high streets, evidenced by increasing vacancies. On the contrary and importantly, we find several trends which are facilitating reorientation and growth in the traditional retail centres and have emerged in the past five years. These changes are conceptualised within existing frameworks of retail resilience to economic shocks in particular retail centres economic cycle and their evolutionary trajectories. The new evidence can be used to substantiate the wider debates on the economic performance of British retail centres and their regeneration in the ‘new retail’ post Covid-19 era.