News English — UK Retail

On a recent visit to the Brent Cross shopping centre in North London we counted no less than nine empty prime shop locations.  The centre's official store count is 120 and we estimate that the total number of prime locations are about half of this. This would mean that the vacancy rate for the shopping centre is 15%. According to LDC the average retail vacancy rate for the whole of the UK was 12.4% in April 2016. The shopping centre vacancy rate was 13.2% in April 2016, down from 14.6% in April 2015. However, compared to the London average of just below 8%, Brent Cross stand...