The West is facing "a crisis" on the high street and in out-of-town retail parks as experts predicted last night that almost one in every four shops – more than five and a half thousand – will close in the region in the next five years.
And the larger supermarkets and retail park stores will suffer just as much as smaller high street shops, with tens of thousands of jobs lost in shops between now and 2018.
The forecast mass closures and lost jobs are down to one thing – the booming growth in people doing their shopping online, with fewer people visiting shops to buy things in the years to come. The forecasts from the Centre for Retail Research appear to have come too late to influence a landmark decision scheduled for tonight by council planners in Wiltshire, who will decide on what could be the last major supermarket battle.
The West's last remaining historic market town without an out-of-town supermarket – Malmesbury in North Wiltshire – is the subject of two planning applications by Waitrose and Sainsbury's, with a decision due this evening in Chippenham.
The planning battle has split the town with many residents backing the plan for a larger Sainsbury's store on a garden centre outside the town. Others want a Waitrose built in the town's historic conservation area, and others do not want any supermarket. The row is made more complicated because the town is a "front-runner" in the Government's new Neighbourhood Plan policy, but both supermarkets have forced a decision to be made before that locally written plan is finished and approved.
The Sainsbury's proposal was rejected by local town councillors, High Street traders and the Neighbourhood Plan group, while the Waitrose plan is backed by some traders and the draft version of the Neighbourhood Plan, despite town council objections.
The Waitrose plan has also met fierce opposition from heritage experts, including Wiltshire Council's own conservation officers and from English Heritage, who said it will destroy the setting of listed buildings nearby and the main approach to England's oldest borough.
But Wiltshire Council's planning officers are recommending that Waitrose be given permission, despite the damage to the area, because they think people will walk up the steep High Street into the town centre from the store site.
Ironically, Malmesbury's town centre is undergoing something of a resurgence without any out-of-town supermarket, and still contains two butchers, two bakers and a traditional fruit and veg store which is opening this week.
According to the CRR, such supermarket battles will become a thing of the past in five years, as retailers like Sainsburys and Waitrose concentrate on online shopping and deliveries.
"The UK is facing a crisis," said a spokesman for the research organisation. "Retailing and retailers will either make clear strategic decisions that permit online retail to coexist with other retail channels, or they will disappear."
"Radical changes need to be made by retailers, town centres and the Government to preserve what is best in retailing.
"Customers are shunning the High Street – their share of consumer spending has declined from 50 per cent in 2000 to a predicted 40 per cent next year," he added.
The West's shops won't do quite as badly as those in Wales – the CRR is forecasting that the 23,660 in the region as of the end of last year will drop to just 18,150 by 2018. That means that some 5,510 shops will close.
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