State Of The Retail Nation

The New Year is the time for retail reviews. As soon as Christmas and the January sales are over, the media focuses on the winners and losers on the UK high street charting. Who and what performed well over Christmas, usually one of the most buoyant times for retailers?

This year, the festive season produced a mixed bag of results for high street retailers across the UK. Here in Newcastle there was a huge overhaul of the city’s Christmas offer, centred around the newly expanded Christmas markets. These were hailed as a welcome addition to the city’s festivities working well alongside festive staples like the pantos, Fenwick Christmas window and Skating at Life.

Given national and international trends, consumer results for Christmas in Newcastle were impressive with extremely positive feedback to the city’s festive efforts and the extended Christmas markets.

The public response to the markets was overwhelmingly positive and their economic impact exceeded expectations with an estimated £70 million boost to the local economy. 90% of city centre visitors felt the Christmas markets were better than the previous year and a huge 96% think they are important for the city.

Footfall figures for the markets were also up significantly with c2.8 million visits compared to 1m in 2016, the last time they were evaluated. Newcastle city centre enjoyed the busiest Sunday on record and the 2nd busiest Saturday ever recorded thanks to the markets and feedback from over 60% of visitors offered valuable suggestions for future improvements.

Festive trading results from Newcastle businesses have yet to be fully collated but early indications show that, like the rest of the country, there was a mixed bag of results. Whatever the final results it has undoubtedly been one of the toughest years on record. The British Retail Consortium has declared 2019 to be the worst year for retail since records began and with online spending surging to 34.5% over November and December, the challenges faced by bricks and mortar retail are unmistakeable.

NE1 has been working hard with the City Council and businesses to ensure that Newcastle can and does respond positively to these challenges and continues to be an attractive and vibrant place that people want to visit and do business.

We know Newcastle scores well on all the elements that make a city an attractive proposition; its diverse retail, first-rate food, leisure and cultural offer but we must continue to evolve and develop. One of the ways Newcastle is evolving is to encourage the development of more residential properties in the city centre. This is a huge opportunity for the city and one that, if realised, guarantees footfall all year round for the city’s bricks and mortar businesses. At the moment, we have a comparatively low density of people living in the city centre but this is growing with new residential developments like the Forge on Forth Banks, Hadrian’s Tower and many other significant residential developments in the planning pipeline coupled with private developers converting above-shop and retail premises.

Repurposing buildings and areas of Newcastle is also central to the Retail Core project. This aims to give Northumberland Street and its tributary streets a proper focus and purpose to enhance the experience and support the city’s central retail offer.

Developing flexible city centre spaces that lend themselves to events and encourages more people into the city also enhance the experience. The temporary closures of Blackett Street and Christmas Markets are part of these efforts and have played a significant part in securing national events like the Heineken and Challenge Cup and Magic Weekend, which returns to the city this May.

Another major focus for NE1 in supporting the city centre are our efforts to lobby Government to speed up the review of business rates, which are crippling bricks and mortar retail. We have been campaigning to get a level playing field for high street shops so they can compete on an equal footing with online retailers.

Work will continue in 2020 and beyond to ensure that Newcastle remains an attractive and vibrant city centre with a great retail and cultural offer. There are no silver bullets but there are solid foundations on which to build the future.