Beauty salons and tattoo parlors have thrived on High Streets while banks and department stores have declined.
Despite the social separation, there are now more restaurants and bars.
Ordnance Survey data reveals the full scope of changes to Britain’s High Streets after two years of Covid lockdowns and trading restrictions.
In March 2022, there will be 9,300 fewer retail stores than in March 2020, as consumers shift to online shopping.
The findings demonstrate how the British High Street is transitioning from a place to shop to a place to do activities, such as getting your nails done and meeting friends for a coffee or cocktail.
Enter your postcode here to learn how the High Streets and shopping districts around you have evolved since the start of the pandemic.
A study of 1.5 million records from Ordnance Survey’s “Points of Interest” mapping data, a comprehensive quarterly survey of businesses, facilities, and services operating in England, Scotland, and Wales, reveals the results.
During the pandemic, Debenhams and Beales were among the most prominent High Street merchants to close their doors, causing a 13.4% decline in department stores across Great Britain. Two years after the initial shutdown in 2020, 328 fewer similar stores existed.
Kendal, Cumbria, was one of the towns whose Beales store was closed and boarded up. But developer Geri Ward has been transforming the structure into what she calls a Cumbria celebration.
“When Beales closed, people stopped coming to our town,” she adds as a worker pulls a Chanel sign from the wall in the old perfume hall.
“We are a traditionally small-business-owning nation. We determined that we would give more of a destination for tourists and locals with smaller, independent merchants inside – the incredible craftsmen, entrepreneurs, and Cumbrian food producers.”
The number of clothing stores in Britain has decreased by 4,300, or 8.5%. When the Arcadia retail empire collapsed in 2020, Burtons, Dorothy Perkins, Wallis, Topshop, and Miss Selfridge all vanished from our shopping districts.
During the pandemic, more than 800 High Street banks and building societies (-8.1%) and more than 6,000 cash machines (-13.0%) closed their doors.
The findings show that the epidemic hastened the transition from cash-based physical retail to card-based online shopping.
In the past few years, high streets and shopping centers have become a magnet for hair and beauty services, with 5,100 more businesses operating than before the epidemic, an increase of 5.9%.
In the G1 and G2 postcodes of central Glasgow, hair and beauty services are now the most common type of store, surpassing pubs and bars in March 2020.
In March of this year, 350 more tattoo parlors and piercing studios were open than before the Covid restrictions, an increase of 8.2%. Numerous regions have obtained one for the first time.
In March 2022, Sheffield had 15 more tattoo parlors, Kingston upon Hull had 11, and Stockport and Cornwall each had 10 more. South Lakeland, which straddles the Lake District and Yorkshire Dales, had ten beauty salons, up from four pre-Covid.
There are six tattoo artists in operation in Kendal. Tony Davis is the artist at the High Street Samsara.
“A tattoo cannot be acquired online. If you desire a tattoo, you must visit a tattoo parlor “he explains. Our industry is now mainstream, and in major English cities, you can find three, four, five, or six studios on the same street.
Doug Rathbone, the mayor of the town, concurs that service-based firms are altering the High Street experience.
“It’s not only about shopping; it’s also about grabbing a cup of coffee and stopping into various places,” he says. “It is of the utmost importance that we recognize and promote the vibrancy of our town centers and High Streets.”
However, it appears that High Streets and commercial districts are becoming more service- and hospitality-oriented locations. And despite the constraints of lockdowns and social distance regulations, restaurants and bars grew by nearly 4%.
After the epidemic, 700 extra pubs and bars were functioning, according to Ordnance Survey data. In addition, there were 2,000 extra cafes and tea rooms and 4,600 more fast-food restaurants.
In March of this year, 300 more fish and chip businesses were open than in March of two years prior, as a result of Covid.
During the Covid epidemic, the government launched a series of financial support initiatives for the hospitality and leisure industries, allowing them to endure the loss of business caused by coronavirus restrictions. In addition to “eat out to help,” the Treasury also presented a package of temporary business rates relief and other initiatives.
However, not all hospitality flourished. In the aftermath of the pandemic, there were about 150 fewer nightclubs, a decline of one-tenth, as social distancing regulations impacted a sector already in decline.
During the pandemic, food stores did well.
The number of independent convenience stores climbed by 1,600, or about 3%. After the Covid restrictions, the major supermarket chains operated 194 extra outlets, a 2.5% increase. Similarly, the number of organic and other specialty food stores increased.
A new local butcher has recently opened in Kendal. Robert Unwin, the proprietor, claims that the company is thriving because he provides a service that is unavailable online.
“It’s the small suggestions you make,” he explains. “Meat consumes my every waking thought. Many individuals desire quality, but they do not know exactly what they are seeking.”
The research reveals regional and local variations in the durability of Main Streets and town centers.
With a 6% increase, Scotland had the greatest increase in dining and drinking establishments. In the north-west and north-eastern England, the increase was approximately 5 percent. The southwest of England and Wales showed the lowest growth in restaurants and bars.
The variance is considerably more pronounced at the local government level. For instance, Oxford had an almost 9% decline in retail whereas Gravesham, Kent, saw a 6% growth.
In East Dunbartonshire, Barnsley, and Knowsley, the number of restaurants and bars increased by more than 15%. In Shetland, the number of eating and drinking facilities decreased by more than a fifth (21.3%), while in Merthyr Tydfil, South Wales, the decline was 10%.
Jamie Howe is the Ordnance Survey surveyor for Cumbria. He wanders the streets of the county to measure changes in the landscape or facilities, sometimes to the centimeter. He claims to have witnessed tremendous changes, both for the better and for the bad.
“Numerous stores have closed, while a large number of new stores and community shops have opened. Because of these changes – coffee shops, breweries, hair and beauty salons – perhaps the town has become more cohesive.”
Credits
Will Dahlgreen, Nassos Stylianou, Daniel Dunford, Callum May, and Mark Easton served as producers.
Jana Tauschinski and Lilly Huynh created the design.
Scott Jarvis, Alex Nicolaides, Assize Periera, Alex Nicholas, Zoe Thomas, Kieran Crowley, Arun Bhari, Marcos Gurgel, and Toby Cox were responsible for development.
Editing by Sarah Bell.
Methodology
The data is a mix of two Ordnance Survey datasets (OS).
We’ve utilized the Points of Interest dataset to indicate which businesses have opened and closed.
This is an exhaustive, location-based database of all public and private companies, educational institutions, and recreational facilities in England, Scotland, and Wales. Points of Interest is updated four times each year and has approximately four million records.
For this study, we employed a March 2020 data release and a March 2022 data release to provide a snapshot of the active points of interest across Great Britain at those times.
We used the OS Retail Geographies dataset for the interactive postcode lookup to report the number of companies on 10 High Streets and shopping locations around the supplied postcode.
This is an Ordnance Survey experimental dataset describing the geography of shopping in Great Britain. It includes local High Streets, retail parks, and shopping malls. When there is a name change or when retail addresses are more than 150m apart, longer streets are broken into smaller pieces.
The generated clusters must also meet a minimum threshold of 15 retail addresses in densely populated urban areas and five retail addresses in rural areas with a lesser population.
To determine the 10 closest shopping locations to the entered postcode, we selected the 10 for which the center of the surrounding box is closest to the center of the postcode boundary as the crow flies.
There may be some streets that are very close to the postcode but do not meet this criterion, or there may be some streets that are quite close as the crow flies according to our definition, but may not be easily accessible.
Wherever else we have reported the number of businesses, we have counted the number of points from the Points of Interest dataset that fall inside the relevant geographic area, irrespective of whether they fall within a street as defined by the Retail Geographies dataset.
