Death of the High Street
The towns left with no department store after latest closures
Many of those invited to the opening of Selfridges on London’s Oxford Street in 1909 were overcome with amazement. “The glittering array of wares in showrooms that are more airy and spacious than those which are familiar to the London eyes, impressed one with their infinite variety,” gushed a wide-eyed Times reporter at the time. “There appeared to be everything here that men or women could desire to purchase.”
That particular department store is still going strong more than a century later. But under siege from online competition and burdened with expensive rent bills, many of its
competitors are being hollowed out. Analysis by The Telegraph shows that the collapse of BHS in 2016, followed by dozens of closures by struggling chains Debenhams and House of Fraser, will leave 18 UK towns without even one traditional department store. The analysis excludes Marks & Spencer, whose shops do not typically stock a full range of department store items, and discounters such as TJ Hughes and Boyes. Those affected stretch across the country, from leafy Witney in the Cotswolds to the post-industrial town of Widnes in Merseyside. All will be desperate to find a new occupier to fill the huge vacancy on their high streets.
Predictions about the “death of the department store” have done the rounds for at least a decade as fears about online shopping mounted, but BHS’S demise threw the precarious situation into sharp relief three years ago.
The company, sold by Sir Philip Green to a serial bankrupt just a year before it collapsed, went under with 160 shops, leaving 11,000 staff out of work. House of Fraser followed BHS into administration last summer. It was sold in a pre-pack deal to Sports Direct tycoon Mike Ashley, who has cancelled dozens of the closures planned by its previous owners but has gone ahead with several others.
Last month it was the turn of Debenhams, which has struck a deal with its landlords to close 22 from a total of up to 50 of its 116 shops after falling into the hands of its lenders in April. The deal remains subject to a legal challenge by Mr Ashley, whose 29pc stake in the company was wiped out.
John Lewis, which has been much stronger than its rivals for most of the past few years, has been able to keep almost all of its shops open. However, the closure of its Knight & Lee shop in Southsea, along with the local Debenhams, will leave the south coast suburb without any department stores.
Bryan Roberts, a retail analyst at TCC Global, says: “The trend is towards fewer, bigger, better, and the likes of John Lewis and Selfridges have demonstrated people will travel to newer concept stores to have a much better array of products.”
Mark Phillipson, a retail specialist at property consultants Colliers International, says the loss of a major department store can be “absolutely crippling” to some towns. “It really does take the heart of the shopping centre or town centre.”
To get a sense of what is likely to happen to empty stores it is worth looking at what happened to the BHS estate.
Some stores have been taken over by retailers able to buck the recent downturn, such as Primark and discount chains B&M and Poundland.
Philip Day, the billionaire behind Edinburgh Woollen Mill, is betting on a department store resurgence. He opened Days Department Store, which houses his other brands such as Peacocks and Jaeger, in a former BHS store in Carmarthen in 2017. Plans for more are in the works.
Others have been converted, either into several separate shops or into offices or homes. BHS’S old Oxford Street flagship is now home to Reserved, a fast-growing Polish fashion chain, and a new indoor crazy golf course. Later this year a 37,000 sq ft food court from the people behind Market Halls in Fulham and Victoria will occupy three upper floors. But Roberts warns converting dozens of empty stores will not be easy: “A lot of department stores in the UK are multi-storey and chopping up a three-storey location is a bit of a challenge.”
More than three years on from its collapse, more than one third of all former BHS stores lie empty, according to the Local Data Company. A troubling prospect for residents of these soonto-be department store deserts.
‘The trend is towards fewer, bigger, better … people will travel to have a much better array of products’