Member Article

South Lakes high streets buck empty shops trend

Retailers in South Lakeland, Cumbria, continue to buck the trend with regard to empty shop numbers on the high street.

Empty shop numbers nationally are 14.1 per cent on most high streets (source: Local Data Company, September 2013) but towns across the area remain well below this level, as indicated by figures collected by South Lakeland District Council.

Empty shop numbers are collected every quarter in Kendal, Ulverston, Kirkby Lonsdale, Windermere, Bowness and Ambleside by the economy and assets team at SLDC.

South Lakeland’s biggest high street is in Kendal. 437 shops were surveyed on the 2 October and 54 were empty, providing an empty shop rate of 12.35 per cent. This compares favourably with the previous two counts which indicated 60 empty shops in Kendal and a rate of 13.69 per cent. Bowness, Ambleside and Windermere have also seen a drop in empty shop numbers during the last quarter.

Six new shops have opened in Kendal. There have also been three in Bowness and two in Ambleside. The empty shop rate in all of the South Lakeland district towns is below the North West average of 20.1 per cent and the national average of 14.1 per cent.

Other towns monitored include Kirkby Lonsdale (4.29 per cent), Ambleside (5.4 per cent), Ulverston (8.9 per cent), Bowness (5.3 per cent) and Windermere (2.5 per cent). Of the towns surveyed in South Lakeland the overall empty shop rate is 6.70 per cent, well below the national average of 14.1 per cent.

Councillor Giles Archibald, Portfolio Holder for Town Centres and Small Business, said: “In Kendal and across South Lakeland we have more shops per capita than in other town centres because of our tourism culture. The fact that we have more shops and a high occupancy rate shows a positive outlook for the road ahead and our local retail economy.”

SLDC continues to support the High Street by providing Shopfront Improvement Grants to local traders across the district.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Simon Malia .