// About 47 shops on average pulled down their shutters for the final time every day last year
// Data found that just over 5,500 of the shops closed their doors because they no longer had the financial viability to trade
The UK’s retail sector had a bruising year in 2022 as more shops closed their doors than at any other point for at least five years with industry groups warning that 2023 will be similarly challenging.
Around 47 sites shut up shop for the last time every day last year, according to new analysis from The Centre for Retail Research (CRR), as retailers grappled with energy costs, staff costs and soaring inflation.
The data revealed that 17,145 shops on high streets and other locations across the country closed in 2022. This was up by nearly 50% in 2021 when 11,449 shops shut.
The group’s survey found that a little over 5,500 of the shops went under because they no longer had the financial viability to trade, while more than 11,600 of them were closed as a larger chain decided to cut its costs.
But the researchers found there had been a 56% drop in shops being closed because larger retailers – with 10 or more sites – went out of business.
They said that many of the chains that were going to fail already had in recent years. But Joules, McColl’s and TM Lewin among others still went under.
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CRR director, Prof 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.”
He expects this trend to continue in 2023 but added: “A few big hitters may well fail, too.”
The centre said that over 151,000 retail jobs had been lost in the UK last year, including from online retailers, an increase of more than 45,000 from the year before.
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. These are sites that have been empty for three months.
Altus Group UK president Robert Hayton said: “Rate-free periods need to be urgently extended to reflect the time that it actually takes to re-let vacant properties.
“The current woes facings the retail sector, driven by the war in Ukraine, mean that empty rates are ripe for modernisation.”
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