'Radical action' needed to stop shops shutting

BELFAST BRIEFING:CATRIONA JONES is not banking on a jubilee jump in trade today. Some retailers are hoping for a sales boost from the extended bank holiday to mark the diamond jubilee of Queen Elizabeth but not Jones. She has decided to close up shop and reopen tomorrow.

Retail research consultancy Springboard believes the double bank holiday could deliver a “silver lining” for retailers because many high streets and shopping centres have planned “special footfall-driving events specifically for the Queen’s jubilee”.

But aside from some jubilee-inspired merchandise – including cupcakes and commemorative biscuit tins – on the shelves of certain supermarket multiples, there is little evidence the event will deliver a sales surge in Derry where Jones runs her business.

A pity. Whether or not you are a supporter of the British monarchy, retailers in Derry and across the North need all the help they can get. Latest statistics from the Northern Ireland Retail Consortium (NIRC) suggest many are struggling to stay in business. The consortium’s latest industry monitor reports that, in the three months to April, shopper numbers fell by 4.7 per cent – driven in part by a strong decline in April of 15.1 per cent.

The latest figures also show that retail vacancy rates rose to 16.6 per cent in April – from 14.1 per cent in January – to leave the North with the highest vacancy rate in the UK.

It is no surprise then that organisations – from the retail consortium, which represents large high street retailers and multiples, to the Northern Ireland Independent Retail Trade Association (NIIRTA) – are warning that more shops will close this year unless “radical action” is taken.

So why, against this overwhelmingly negative backdrop, would Jones chose not to open her small gift boutique, the Olive Tree in Derry, at this time?

Perhaps she is just optimistic by nature but it might also be down to the fact that Jones is the first business person in the North to benefit from a new scheme – unique to Northern Ireland – that is designed to encourage, in particular retail, entrepreneurs to take a chance. The scheme gives small businesses, established in long-term empty retail premises, a 50 per cent rates discount during the first year.

It will not “work miracles”, according to the North’s Minister for Finance but he hopes it will give more support to small businesses and revitalise towns and cities.

If the Olive Tree’s example is anything to go by, it also breathes new life into long-vacant sites – in the past it was home to a newsagent.

Sammy Wilson believes the decline in the retail sector is not just an economic problem but a community life issue – particularly for small towns. He says the new rates initiative allows anyone who sets up a business in an empty retail unit to apply for the empty retail premises concession to “help them get established in the difficult first year”.

“This relief is unique in the UK and it’s to encourage empty shop units and other retail premises back into business.

“The new business doesn’t have to be retail, it doesn’t have to be town centre and the premises don’t necessarily have to be a traditional shop,” Wilson has outlined.

The rates relief scheme goes hand in hand with another initiative that allows rate free non-commercial window displays in empty retail premises.

The president of the body that represents the independent retail trade is keen to hear any new ideas that will help local businesses. NIIRTA’s Paul Stewart said some town centres are approaching a 50 per cent shop vacancy rate. There are figures that suggest 2,000 local shops could close this year.

In addition, there is also what he has described as a “staggering” two million square foot of out-of-town superstore development currently under planning consultation.

“We are facing meltdown unless the Executive acts fast,” Stewart has warned.

Jane Bevis, a director of the NIRC agrees. She has also warned: “As the number of functioning shops drops, a location becomes less and less a place that customers feel is worth going to and spiral of decline sets in.”

Bevis believes many of the North’s retail troubles long pre-date either of the latest recessions and she says “actively investing” in town centres and marketing them to customers is crucial to turning things around.

The consortium is urging the Executive to look at setting up “Business Improvement Districts” which, it says, could breathe new life into town centres.

The NIIRTA has gone one step further and produced its own version of the Portas review – a report commissioned last year by Prime Minister David Cameron on the future of the British high street by the retail expert Mary Portas. It outlined 28 recommendations to “rescue” failing high streets. Portas stressed in her report that high streets were the “heart of towns and communities” and that if everyone were to “invest in and create social capital in the heart of our communities, the economic capital will follow”.

The association’s own version of the review – Town Centre First – contains what it describes as 50 solutions to the North’s retail problems. Among its recommendations are a freeze on car parking charges for 10 years and a third party right of appeal against out-of-town superstore applications.

If any of these new proposals can halt the number of local shop owners bringing down the shutters on their businesses, that really would be something to celebrate – bank holiday or not.