Our friends at The Local Data Company have been busy analysing the data in Town Centre Intelligence (TCI), the all-singing all-dancing urban information tool we helped them develop.

You couldn’t move for stories about retail vacancies derived from TCI data last week, and no wonder – our high streets have a gap-toothed look about them just now, and the information from TCI is really too good to ignore. See how the BBC covered the story here.

TCI allows easy (and statistically robust) comparisons between town centres – defined consistently across Great Britain by the government boundaries defined by a Geofutures methodology.

This reveals significant regional variations in the vacancy rate – southern towns and cities are still faring much better than their northern counterparts, where vacancy rates have doubled since mid-2008, while Wales and the West are performing better than average with only a 25% increase in the same period.

A similar pattern was revealed when LDC researched what has happened to empty Woolworths premises. About 70% of all the stores are still empty, but within this national picture, fewer than 50% of Greater London Woolworths premises have not been re-let, while 90% of those in north-east England are still vacant.

Of those Woolworths stores which have been re-let or are in negotiation, LDC found 30% becoming supermarkets and 42% opening as discount stores including 99p Stores, Poundland and Bargain Madness – an interesting trend which will have long-lasting impact on the profile of town centre street scapes.

We’re continuing to work with The Local Data Company to mine more insight from the data. A special area of interest is the difference in performance between traditional high streets and shopping centres, where trends like the tide of discount stores in lower-rent locations may prove to be highly relevant. We’ll have an update soon.

Town Centre Intelligence (TCI), the new urban data management tool we developed for The Local Data Company, reveals that UK retail vacancy rates rose from 4% to 12% in the 6 months to March.

We were chuffed to see that the Financial Times used this information as a source for a headline story on 16 May 2009, also using the data to highlight the worst-affected sectors – predictably perhaps, these are fashion, electrical, furniture DIY and jewellery retailers.

The application delivers constantly-updated data on 675 town centres across Great Britain, giving instant insights to planners, developers and investors into the retail mix and the health of the high street.

TCI highlights that the last two quarters have seen fast growth in the rate of shop vacancies, with particularly high levels in the north east of England and the West Midlands, as the contour map created by Geofutures for the FT illustrates.

Map of retail vacancies Q4 08-Q1 09 prepared by Geofutures for the Financial Times

The specific effects of the credit crunch can be seen in the nature of these vacancies: the overall closure rate has not increased significantly, but the numbers of new openings – often reliant upon bank finance – have shown a sharp reduction.

The main idea behind TCI is the ability to manage vast volumes of data seamlessly, drilling down through these kinds of numbers, comparing town centres like for like and at successively fine scales. For more information about the product, please visit The Local Data Company website.

See the news story on ft.com (registration required).