Background to the research project
The last Census of Distribution, which provided complete data on floorspace, employment and turnover for the retail industry, was completed in 1971. Since then retail development and retail planning has depended upon proprietary sources, with each data source tending to specialise in certain kinds and sizes of development. As a result, none of them were comprehensive and no single source was able to provide an overall picture indicating how much new retail development was taking place, let alone where new developments were being built.
Early British Council of Shopping Centres monitoring
Following a change in Government policy on new retail development in the mid 1980s, there was a rapid growth in out-of-town development and by 1990 it was apparent that the scale and location of new development was causing problems and that there was a need for better data; the Government's data series for commercial floorspace stopped in 1985.
In the early 1990s, BCSC started to monitor not only the amount but the location of shopping centres and retail warehouse parks by pulling together existing data sources and adding information about whether the developments were in or outside town centres. Although there was considerable pressure to change national policy, the evidence base for the rate of change (or indeed the location of new development) was sketchy. This was highlighted by the Select Committee in 1994 - the same committee that demanded the change in policy which resulted in the new PPG6: Town Centres and Retail Development in 1996.
The committee's recommendations resulted in a long-term research project to define 'town centres' in order to source national data on floorspace, employment and turnover, with the goal of improving statistics as a basis for better retail planning. This project has only recently begun to provide time series data.
By 2000, the Government was eager to monitor the effects of the 1996 policy change and was using the BCSC data to assess what was happening. This indicated that by 2000 - for the first time since the mid-1980s - newly-completed floorspace in town centre shopping schemes exceeded that for out-of-town shopping centres, retail warehouse parks and factory outlet centres put together.
This was seen by the Government as evidence that the new policy was beginning to work and was widely publicised, although it only represented half the story: the data did not include supermarkets, free-standing retail warehouses and schemes smaller than 5,000 sq m. Nevertheless, this became the accepted picture.
ODPM analysis of retail completions in England
It was not until July 2005, however, that for the first time the ODPM (previously DETR, now DCLG) published time-series data on new retail floor space completed in England by location. This series was based on Valuation Office Agency data and was based on a consistent definition of town centres using a GIS model developed by Geofutures. It showed that, after town centre schemes hit rock bottom (accounting for only 14% of new floorspace in 1994), the proportion of newly-completed floorspace had risen, but was still less than 30% of the total by the end of 2000. If schemes within 300m of the town centre boundary are included, this proportion rises to 40%.
The ODPM publication did not reach a wide audience, which explains why most experts still think town centre schemes make up the majority of new floorspace. This is in part due to the lack of accessible data and also to the publicity given to the earlier BCSC data.
While the ODPM publication offered the first comprehensive insight into retail location, the report did not quantify how far from town centres off-centre development occurred (except for those that fell within an arbitrary 300-metre distance of the town centre).
Furthermore, while the analysis suggested that PPG6 was starting to have an effect on the location of retail development, analysis of geographic resolution was fairly coarse, giving no insight into regional variations, nor indeed into the way in which differing policy regimes in the devolved administrations were affecting retail location strategy. In order to address these questions, it is necessary to know where the town centres are, and where retail developments are located.
A new methodology
Geofutures Ltd has been involved in developing the method for identifying town centre boundaries for some years. As part of this project, Geofutures has extended the model developed for the DCLG (previously ODPM and DETR) to include smaller centres which are currently excluded from the town centres statistical series, and also to derive town centres boundaries for Scotland (which lies outside the remit of DCLG). This means that a wide range of town centres for the whole of Great Britain can be identified (Northern Ireland was not included in this analysis).
Retail development data were sourced from Property Market Analysis (PMA) which maintains an extensive, continuously updated database of retail completions and schemes currently in the development pipeline. Crucially, for analysis using a GIS model, in addition to providing information on the type of development and its size, the PMA database also includes Ordnance Survey grid references, where available.
By combining these two datasets in a GIS model, it is possible to determine the proximity of each retail scheme (whether completed or in the development pipeline) to a town centre. The graphs contained within this electronic information resource show the relative proximity to town centres of all newly-completed retail floorspace and that in the pipeline in Great Britain. |
