Memorandum from British Council of Shopping
Centres (PPS 6 02)
STATISTICS FOR
RETAIL PLANNING
Following last week's meeting of the Select
Committee on Changes to PPS6, at which I gave oral evidence on
behalf of BCSC, We thought we would like to bring to your attention
the problem of lack of statistics for retail planning. We are
also aware of the Committee's earlier desire to assess the effectiveness
of the PPG6 and PPS6 in terms of the proportion of new
retail floorspace, especially supermarkets, which has been built
in town centres, as an indicator of the impact of the policy.
The questions previously asked by Committee members did not get
a complete answer.
This issue was first raised by your predecessors
in 1994, in its inquiry into Shopping Centres and their Future.
The Government Response of February 1995 (Cm 2767) promised
better statistics once "town centres" could be satisfactorily
defined so as to allow national data on retail floorspace, employment
and turnover to be attributed to these areas and to enable policy
performance to be monitored. Unfortunately, this project took
a long time to get a standard method for defining centres, and,
more particularly, to deal with data quality problems, and it
was not until July 2005 that CLG published information at
a national level for the proportion of all new retail floorspace
within town centres and town centres with a 300m buffer for each
year to 2002 for England and Wales. http://www.communities.gov.uk/documents/planningandbuilding/pdf/148952.pdf
A further update to 2005 was published
with the July 2008 consultation document Proposed Changes
to Planning Policy Statement 6: Planning for Town Centres. http://www.communities.gov.uk/archived/publications/planningandbuilding/pp6consultation
The information provided by the graph is:
— for all types of new retail floorspace
(except extensions and mezzanines, which are attributed to the
year when the main building was built) and does not distinguish
between different types of retail formats (eg shopping centres,
retail warehouses, supermarkets, etc);
— for England and Wales as a whole; and
— for "town centres" plus an
arbitrary 300m buffer—which would exceed the extent of "edge-of-centre"
sites.
Ideally, we need to know where all newly-completed
retail floorspace was built by year, by region, by local authority
and even, perhaps, by centre, and, if possible, by broad types
of retail development.
BCSC'S RESEARCH
As part of BCSC's Future of Retail Property
Research Programme we tried to explore the issue of where the
new retail floorspace was built between 1999 and 2005, at
national and regional level. This looked in detail at whether
the new floorspace was within town centres and if not how far
from the centre it was built (BCSC, In Town or Out of Town?, 2006).
Since then, as part of further work to understand
the contribution of different retail formats to the performance
of the policy, BCSC has further interrogated our data on planning
completions (which also excludes extensions and mezzanines). This
shows that there was a considerable variation in performance between
formats.
Our data (see attachment)[1]
showed that for the period 1999-2004:
— 78% of new shopping centre floorspace
was in town centres—it be nearly 100% today because it included
the last out-of-town regional shopping centres, such as Bluewater;
— 23% of newly-built supermarket floorspace
(excluding extensions and mezzanines) was built in town centres—the
real figure is probably between 10 and 15%; and
— 7% of retail warehouse floorspace was
built in town centres.
This illustrates that the policy has relied
very heavily on city/town centre shopping centre schemes, which
were mainly built in the largest centres. As we indicated in our
evidence, the current recession will mean that many schemes may
not proceed, the amount of new town centre retail floorspace will
fall off over the next few years and, because of the long lead-times
on town centre projects, it may take a long time before new schemes
get built.
The building of retail warehouse floorspace
has also slowed down, as demand has changed and existing vacant
retail warehouses are meeting current needs. In the meantime,
an increasing number of supermarkets are proposed, and, as now,
a very high proportion of newly-built floorspace (about 90%) is
likely to be built outside existing centres. This could have implications
for medium-sized and smaller towns which badly need town centre
developments.
NEED FOR
BETTER INFORMATION
FOR RETAIL
PLANNING
BCSC is very concerned that, despite having
a target of increasing the proportion of new retail floorspace
built in town centres year-on-year, CLG has not given sufficient
priority to improving the quality of the floorspace data and publishing
annual monitoring results not only for England and Wales, but
for all regions and local authorities.
RECOMMENDATION
We consider that the Committee should ask CLG
to deliver their commitment of 1995 to improve information
for retail planning, specifically to provide annual data for new
retail floorspace by location (town centres and outside town centres)
by region and by local authority.
We are aware that CLG have a computer system
in place which could deliver this data within a month or two but
have not given this issue any priority since their last publication.
However, since this would still not answer the
question posed last week by the Committee on the location of newly-built
supermarket floorspace - new stores, extensions and mezzanines
added to existing stores—it might be better seek that directly
from the supermarkets. Information on the gross new floorspace
and the postcode would be all that would be required.
As strong supporters of the Government's "town
centres first" policy we are concerned that the policy delivers
that aim effectively and that the effects of any changes in policy
can be fully and regularly monitored.
May 2009
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