British Council of Shopping Centres
In town or out of town?
Has the planning guideline designed to halt the spread of out-of-town shopping centres worked? The British Council of Shopping Centres (BCSC) asked Geofutures, together with its Expert Panel member Michael Bach, to find out.
The practice used its influential Town Centres statistics produced for the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG, previously ODPM), and data kindly provided by leading property researchers Property Market Analysis (PMA). Geofutures assessed all completed retail developments since 1999, together with those in the development pipeline, to discover exactly how many are within the town centre boundaries, or how far they are outside them.
Extensive out-of-town retail development took place in the UK in the 15 or so years before 1996, and concerns grew about the viability of town centres as a result. Planning Policy Guideline 6 (PPG6) was the response: led by Michael Bach, then principal government planner, it required retailers applying for out of town planning consents to consider in-town sites first.
The Geofutures analysis suggests that ten years on, PPG6 is now beginning to work, and this trend is continuing with a further increase of in-town retail developments in the pipeline.
Between 1999 and 2005, the proportion of new retail completions within town centres in Great Britain represented just over 30% of the total, with 50% located within 0.5km of the town centre boundary. The proportion of schemes under construction within town centres is about 60%, with 75% within around 0.2km of the town centre boundary. About 34% of schemes with planning permission fall within the town centre boundary, while 50% are within 0.2km.
The project for BCSC also involved asking market experts about their perception of retail growth over the period. The results showed most thought that 50% or even 80% of developments had been in the town centres, far greater then the actual proportion. It may be that ‘out of town retail’ conjures up different images for different individuals – we have seen fewer major malls being developed in the last ten years, but the growth of out-of-town supermarkets and retail warehousing has continued.
The results suggest that development schemes already in the pipeline when PPG6 came into force meant that out-of-town development continued unabated for some years after 1996, but the current development pipeline is more compliant with the guideline.
A follow-up study
Where is new retail development likely to occur in the next ten years?
To answer this question, the British Council of Shopping Centres (BCSC) commissioned the Future of Retail Property research project, In Town or Out of Town? With research support from Geofutures, Expert Panel member Michael Bach re-examined the popular view that government policy has been successful in encouraging half of all new floorspace to be developed in town centres.
This research took comprehensive and geo-referenced data on retail developments completed in the last ten years, together with sites in the pipeline, from sources including consultants Property Market Analysis. Retail developments were analysed by location in a GI model to show whether they were in town or outside the DCLG boundaries created by Geofutures.
The re-analysis reveals that the ‘town centres first’ guideline was slow to bite and still has a significant way to go. Current doubts over the future of this policy will crucially impact smaller town centres in particular.
These research results represent a unique baseline data resource which will allow us to see how the pattern of retail development is changing in the years to come. BCSC members can now visualise this information in an online interactive tool developed by Geofutures, enabling them to perceive the full picture of retail location across all types of urban centre in Great Britain.
Users can scroll through town centres by size and, for each of the last ten years, see dynamically-refreshed graphs showing the relative proximity to town centres of all newly-completed and pipeline retail floorspace.
