You don't need to be an 'investor' to invest in Singletrack: 6 days left: 95% of target - Find out more
No new money coming in and in breach of it's loans, plus landlords appealing against CVA..
It's no surprise, really. It's massively sad for the jobs on the line. I can't even remember the last time I went into a HoF.
I've never been into one, but assume it is a slighter posher John Lewis variant...
Does look like the days of department stores are numbered....
Chester decided to knock a load of servicable buildings down and build a whole new shopping centre in the city with HOF as a lead tennant, they pulled out a few weeks ago and scheme is stil going ahead but with more housing, and at huge cost to council tax payers if it fails, which it probably will , very few retailers investing in bricks and tills, now all going for bricks and clicks in warehouses .
There was an article in the Sunday Times about councils investing heavily in retail buildings just as the bottom falls out of the market.......
I read somewhere that the bottom end of retail is doing great (small one-off local stores, mum+pop coffee shops, etc)
but landlords are unwilling to drop rents to a level those guys can afford, and are therefore ruining town centres as shops close up and leave an abandoned shopping centre in their wake.
I can;t remember the article though, it was great with examples of how re-zoning shopping to appeal to small businesses has resulting in a rejuvenated and thriving town centre.
Was in the Glasgow store recently - hateful rabbit warren of a place. If its indicative of the others I'm not surprised they*re going under
Isn't it just Debenhams in a Party Frock?
Can't say I'll miss it.
Isn’t it just Debenhams in a Party Frock?
Can’t say I’ll miss it.
An expensive frock at that.
Same.
Here we all are on the internet; why are people surprised shops on the high street are failing ?
the department store model is dying, with the exception of really high end and small scale, HoF will probably crash which will be bad for those working there, just what the economy doesn't need right now is a big employer going bump. If anyone here works for HoF you have my sympathies
Always seemed similar to John Lewis to me and my local John Lewis is more convenient to get to (plus parking is free...)
The shop in Guildford is probably the biggest shop on the High Street - and actually I've no issues with it, I've bought loads of stuff there; suits, sunglasses, shoes, casual clothes. It's light, airy, there's a decent cafe and restaurant, it's a big glitzy building, which I guess is half the problem.
For me I'd say this risks being the most high profile failure in terms of 'damage' to the British high street. But I accept that's probably impacted by my propensity to shop 'regularly' (about twice a year) in Guildford. If I went somewhere without one more I'd probably be thinking 'meh'.
The shop in Guildford is probably the biggest shop on the High Street
Yep but it still meets the description of the one in Glasgow
hateful rabbit warren of a place.
IMO, HoF has or a long time been a slightly tatty John Lewis, or slightly posher Debenhams, whichever you prefer.
but landlords are unwilling to drop rents to a level those guys can afford, and are therefore ruining town centres as shops close up and leave an abandoned shopping centre in their wake.
I had a chat with the owner of an outdoor equipment shop that was closing in Cheltenham (this was in 2011, but I imagine the circumstances are similar). Many landlords will have commercial loans/mortgages on their properties, based on a rental income of 'x'. They can't agree a rental income of less than 'x', as this would be in breach of their loan conditions, so instead they have to have no one in the unit, but it notionally being worth 'x' in rental. Mental.
hateful rabbit warren of a place.
You think? I find it ok, the floors are comparatively small, but maybe it's becuase I only ever one or two of the concessions. I've never found it that bad when traipsing around behind mrs njee20.
There was an article in the Sunday Times about councils investing heavily in retail buildings just as the bottom falls out of the market…….
Wokingham is going to be a textbook example of this.
Step 1) Make business rates so high that only charity shops can afford them as they're exempt, thus ensuring no one bothers with your high street
Step 2) Evict everyone, demolish most of it and start again.
Step 3) Plan the construction badly so the entire town is effectively closed for over a year. Thus ensuring the remaining 'nice' end of the high street also struggles.
Step 4) Tell everyone how much money you've invested/wasted on your vanity project and to get around not being able to put up council taxes just make adult social care a separate surcharge of 5%.
Seriously, its an omnishambles. How the **** this is in line with the Tory mantra of letting the private sector do the investing, small government, austerity, I have no idea. I've no idea why people round here keep voting for these bawbags and that John Redwood.
That’s easy to answer.
That lot only shop in out of town M&S’s.
4x council rates for properties empty longer than 6months should help rejuvenate high streets and free up some housing for people as well.
Is there a downside?
The city council where I live has just completed purchase (at a cost of £150m+) of the shopping centre at the "posh" end of town. The biggest tenant is an upmarket, small chain (9 locations I think) department store. This could go either way, might be a very profitable move or might be a financial disaster (it always seems very busy). If the latter though, no-one will ever be held accountable as the people responsible would just move on. There is another (not quite as upmarket but more so than Debenhams) independent, family owned, department store in the town which has just announced they are struggling to stay afloat. A shame after almost 60 years there, but I think with the best will in the world, that business model has largely had it's day.
I wonder, a long time ago, if Tim Berners-Lee ever contemplated the magnitute of consequence when he connected two computers with a cable and got them "talking".
I have no interest at all in going into a HoF. I find department stores messy and confusing spaces with little logical layout. Why would I go in when I can shop online without the need to travel, park and spend time when I could be out on my bike? My only surprise is that they have lasted as long as they have, who actually shops in department stores anymore?
I have no interest at all in going into a HoF. I find department stores messy and confusing spaces with little logical layout. Why would I go in when I can shop online without the need to travel, park and spend time when I could be out on my bike? My only surprise is that they have lasted as long as they have, who actually shops in department stores anymore?
Retail park places like John Lewis probably do well - one near me is mobbed. The local town centre (Stockport) is too much of a bin for the middle classes to tolerate, so the retail parks hoover up the business.
Debenhams can't be far behind. and they just increased interest rates. that's going to help.
Here we all are on the internet; why are people surprised shops on the high street are failing ?
I am not surprised it has been going down hill for years. The only shops left will be for physical things like haircuts, coffee, food. Shops are only any use if you need something in the next hour and can't wait until the next day or so and that is a rare occurrence for me.
I like the one in Skipton and most of the presents I buy are as a result of a 30 minute dash. Biggest shop on the high street too so god knows what will replace it. Charity shops and cafes if the rest of the high street is anything to go by. Great.
The local town centre (Stockport) is too much of a bin for the middle classes to tolerate
Stockport is a good example of town centre shopping space (Merseyway and surrounds) that was absolutely shafted when an out of town shopping centre (Trafford centre) opened. Shopping in Stockport was actually pretty good, lots of parking, good mix of shops. mostly traffic free. It just wasn't indoors.
As its fortunes fell, it got tattier, so it's fortunes fell more, and so on. Now even M&S is closing, and if the centre of a town the size of Stockport can't support an M&S, something's very wrong.
There’s a big concern in Edinburgh that Jenners will close too as they’re owned by HoF. It seems to do a good tourist trade and is more akin to a Scottish Harrods than a chain department store.
How can the internet be responsible for this when their clientele is mostly made up of over-made-up old ladies with more money than sense? (and njee20)
Stockport is a good example of town centre shopping space (Merseyway and surrounds) that was absolutely shafted when an out of town shopping centre (Trafford centre) opened. Shopping in Stockport was actually pretty good, lots of parking, good mix of shops. mostly traffic free. It just wasn’t indoors.
Hard to picture the Merseyway being a good shopping experience given its current parlous state. It is tragic.
Such an imbecilic development. Let's concrete over one of the best, most defining features of any town - the river. (I believe the Mersey was covered over long before the shopping centre, but the rise in public sanitation through the 50s and 60s should have signalled a move to free the Royal Blue Mersey). A missed opportunity to create the Paris of the North.
when their clientele is mostly made up of over-made-up old ladies with more money than sense? (and njee20)
How do you know njee20 isn't an over-made-up lady with more money than sense 😉
Increased rents, rates and lower footfall a recipe for failure.
There are many items that just can’t be purchased without going online now. It can be very frustrating when you are trying to find something but it is three days away due to it being Friday...
Out of Town Shopping Hell Centers we’re built becuse In Town shopping streets were hellish places filled with cars and busses and Yobs and death.
So the answer to the problem was to shift the trade into a location where access was easy, namely old large factory spaces (meddowhell) and such.
Inner malls that kept the rain off your head and your kids could run freely like angry bees, whilst you filled your basket with tat.
And the model proved successful and plenty of people have/and still/ use them and they’ve become accepted places ingrained in people’s movements.
Cant honestly say that they’ve not been successful can you...
And did no-one realise the death of the high st was just around the corner? C’mon, social engineering is a formed art and the Councils involved knew exactly what the outcome would be.
Now? Well out of town shopping and the internet have taken over, it’s well documented that this situation would occur, but it still went ahead.
TBH, the sooner the high st shopping “experience” is killed off and the commercial properties turned into accommodation the better.
IMO
I'm not saying Merseyway was an aesthetic triumph, but it was decent shopping hub in its day. Chr1st, even my mum was happy shopping there, and she's basically Hyacinth Bucket.
Njee, earlier.
It's like no one learned from the Sheffield / Meadowhall example.
I have no interest at all in going into a HoF. I find department stores messy and confusing spaces with little logical layout. Why would I go in when I can shop online without the need to travel, park and spend time when I could be out on my bike? My only surprise is that they have lasted as long as they have, who actually shops in department stores anymore?
I usually do all my christmas shopping in JL because it will sell something for my younger brother and 95yr old gran. Even shopping online that would take an evening of googling "presents for ............" In JL I'm in, and 60min and a few quid later it's all done. Probably could get each individual item cheaper on Amazon, but then there would be the merry go round of "sorry you were out cards". And my mostly northern family still associate JL with being reassuringly expensive rather than just somewhere to get a TV and washing machine from.
I am not surprised it has been going down hill for years. The only shops left will be for physical things like haircuts, coffee, food.
This came up on R4 at some point recently. The recent obsession with "retail therapy" isn't as old as people believe. You really don't need to go back too far to a time when the high street was all coffee shops, hairdressers, and a smattering of independent shops.
Think about it, the point at which 50% of households had a car was around 1980, without a car, getting the into your regional town to spend the day buying crap you don't need becomes a much bigger faff. Couple that with tends like millennials preferring small luxuries (coffee, avocado on toast) and experiences then it's not surprising that the high street of 20 years ago is struggling.
Well as someone mentioned Wokingham here is an idea of the debt the council is in
271 million and rumor has it that figure is now nearer 400 million. Current business are on their knees, you only have to do a quick Google search to see how many are up for sale. Major chains are queuing up to leave. M&S, Cafe Rouge and Prezzo all gone.
And it's very obvious that very few if any new takers for the new units. You only have to watch the councillor try and sell the redevelopment to work that out.
Local councils get their money from business rates, which online shops wont be paying. So its going to get worse before it gets better.
How do you know njee20 isn’t an over-made-up lady with more money than sense
I've met him, could easily be mistaken for one 😉
The job losses are sad but I'm a bit conflicted about the general demise of these kind of shops.
I remember as a kid getting dragged into town and around M&S etc once or twice a year for clothes with mum and sister. It was grim - even my mum remembers it being grim. If my own kids never have to do it then great. I've got no nostalgia for it.
The other thing is that I grew up with it being the done thing to go buy your school shirts / work shirts / pants from M&S or wherever. So sometimes I still do that. There's no danger kids growing up now will have the same inclination so it's hard to see where these businesses are going in 10 or 20 years.
tomd, in M&S
Conspiracy of optimism by local councils and their vanity projects, particularly in the 90/00s where millions were spent on town-centre shopping centres whereas the reality is there's way too much capacity / all competing with each other. Where I live we have Guildford, Basingstoke and Reading competing as major retail centres, then every small town has it's own 'centre' half-full of empty chain-stores and high-price parking making it a grim-experience. I can walk to my local town centre in 5 minutes - most of my neighbours drive and we wonder why we have an obesity problem.
On a point of fact - national govt sets business rates not councils. Also, it's only since 2013 that councils have retained any of the local business rates - and it's only 50% and this can in turn affect central govt rev support grant depending on lots of other factors.
We ran a pretty successful retail business through the 80's and 90's on the edge of a large city.
Through this time business rates spiralled dramatically and we had the growth of the out of town shopping centres. Firstly Meadowhall,and subsequently the White Rose at Leeds. Takings started to reduce and Saturdays saw a halving of what we would normally take.
Ultimately all the hours we were working,open 6 days a week and stock buying on a Sunday,just became pointless. Ultimately the business closed and the property became a pharmacy and hairdressers.
Large developers and retailers at that time had far too much power so just needed to promise jobs and planning applications would be a breeze.
Now we have bland looky likey concrete industrial units that have become a type of leisure activity. Maybe I am an old cycnic but I just cannot understand how anyone finds spending hours walking about in one of these places as pleasurable.
4x council rates for properties empty longer than 6months should help rejuvenate high streets and free up some housing for people as well.
Is there a downside?
A good sentiment, but unfortunately there are only so many retailers willing to open a physical bricks and mortar shop to go round; not every high street retail space is suitable for conversion; and the gvmt have already abolished empty property relief for business rates, meaning landlords usually become liable for the costs and devise elaborate wheezes for avoiding paying (see below), and even in some cases demolishing buildings.
The E-comerce warehouses do pay business rates too!
Granted it isn't as much as a high street sq. M. The Midlands should be doing alright as most are there.
Mmmmmm.... toast.
Woolworths , Littlewoods, BHS, and more large retailers have gone to the wall, theyre an old concept, M and S are closing stores as is Next and more large retailers, a huge loss to the governmnet in buissness rates and a huge loss to local councils who recieve less handbacks from the rates collected.Add in the landlords of both small and larger buildings who need footfall to survive, loosing a larger store, upsets the balancing act as people see empty shops and dont visit others in the same street.
Granted it isn’t as much as a high street sq. M. The Midlands should be doing alright as most are there.
Well it hasn't helped Northamptonshire council