Approximately 150,000 employees will be lost as a result of the closure of a record number of stores in 2022. The highest number in at least five years.
In 2022, close to fifty stores will close daily, the highest rate in at least five years.
In a difficult year for retail, 17,145 stores shuttered last year. An increase of roughly 50 percent from 2021, when 11,449 stores closed.
According to the analysis conducted by the Centre for Retail Research throughout the course of the previous year. Approximately 47 businesses ceased operations daily.
As stores closed, jobs also disappeared. Last year, more than 151,000 retail jobs were lost in the United Kingdom, including those at online stores. An increase of almost 45,000 from the previous year.
The group’s poll revealed that slightly more than 5,500 of the businesses failed. While more than 11,600 of them were shuttered as a result of a larger chain’s decision to reduce expenses.
Professor Joshua Bamfield
The head of the Centre for Retail Research,Stated, “Rather than firm collapse. Rationalization now appears to be the primary driver for closures as retailers continue to rapidly cut their cost base.”
He predicted that the pattern would likely continue this year, but noted that a few “big hitters” would fail.
The researchers discovered a 56% decline in the number of stores closing due to the failure of larger retailers with 10 or more locations.
According to them, many of the failing chains have already failed in recent years. However, Joules, McColl’s, and TM Lewin, among others, failed.
According to the real estate consultant Altus Group, merchants and landlords will have to pay up to £1.1 billion on April 1. It is to cover the business rates on vacant properties. These locations have been vacant for three months.
Robert Hayton, president of Altus Group in the United Kingdom, stated, “Rate-free periods must be increased immediately to reflect the actual time required to re-let vacant properties.
“Vacancy rates are ripe for modernization as a result of the retail sector’s current troubles. Which are caused by the war in Ukraine.”
