'Government should freeze business rates and reform the broken transitional relief system. This will force many retailers to make tough decisions about whether to invest in new stores or close existing ones. 'Higher costs are already pushing up prices and the industry faces a government imposed extra £800m business rates bill from April 2023. 'While the North has seen some of the biggest improvements in openings over the last year, they still have some of the highest vacancy rates in the country. Helen Dickinson OBE, Chief Executive of the British Retail Consortium, spoke of a North-South divide with vacant retail properties. 'The current woes facings the retail sector, driven by the war in Ukraine, mean that empty rates are ripe for modernisation.' Robert Hayton, UK president at Altus Group, said: 'Rate-free periods need to be urgently extended to reflect the time that it actually takes to re-let vacant properties.
These are sites that have been empty for three months. The real estate adviser Altus Group said that retailers and landlords would have to pay close to £1.1 billion from April 1 to cover the business rates on empty sites. This was an increase of more than 45,000 on the year before. The centre said that more than 151,000 retail jobs had been lost in the UK last year, including from online retailers. He said the trend was likely to continue this year, but added that a few 'big hitters' could also go under.
#Shut in 2022 driver
The Centre for Retail Research's director, Professor Joshua Bamfield, said: 'Rather than company failure, rationalisation now seems to be the main driver for closures as retailers continue to reduce their cost base at pace.' But Joules, McColl's and TM Lewin among others still went under. They said that many of the chains that were going to fail already had in recent years. But the researchers found there had been a 56 per cent drop in shops being closed because larger retailers – with 10 or more sites – went out of business.
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