Using this interactive tool
To get started, choose to view retail completions (completed retail developments ranging from 1999 to 2005 or all years combined) or those in the pipeline (retail sites currently under development). You can do this by selecting the relevant tab at the top of the main screen. On the completions tab, a drop-down menu allows you to select the year you wish to see, or you can choose to look at all years.
Choosing a subset of developments
Use the drop-down boxes on the left hand side of the screen to choose the subset of data you wish to view. Hover over the 'i' information icons to see a quick summary of the information contained within each drop-down. The developments data (retail developments and developments in the pipeline) were kindly provided by PMA.
For retail completions, you can view data by country (GB, England, Scotland or Wales) or by type (see details below).
For pipeline developments, select by country (GB, England, Scotland or Wales), by type (see details below) or by planning status (see details below).
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Retail development types
District centres: Local, convenience-based shopping facilities, separate from major shopping areas, usually including a supermarket.
Factory outlet shops: Purpose-built developments with units occupied by retailers and manufacturers selling goods (often last season's stock, or seconds) at a permanent discount to high street prices.
Leisure: Used to denote a range of commercial leisure uses, including cinemas, restaurants/bars, health clubs, bingo, bowling, hotels, possibly a purpose built development usually located out-of-town.
Retail warehousing: Individual 'warehouse' format stores, typically located outside town centres (usually at least 500 sq m), possibly including supermarkets and 'high street' retailers.
Shopping centres: Typically developments of at least 5,000 sq m, which are built and let as a single entity, including at least three retail units and a purpose-built pedestrian area outside the component shops. Traditionally, most units are smaller than large format, retail warehouse stores.
Superstore / foodstore: All supermarkets (irrespective of size). Superstores are usually regarded as being a minimum 2,500 sq m in size.
Unit shops: High street shop units, usually in town centre locations (typically smaller stores < 500 sq m, though sometimes larger in modern developments).
Retail development planning status types
Planning application: Scheme with a planning application awaiting a decision or subject to appeal or public enquiry.
Planning permission: Scheme with outline or outline full planning permission.
Under construction: Scheme already under construction. |
Viewing town centres
Use the slider at the bottom left of the screen to locate all town centres of selected sizes on the map.
Choosing each set of town centres using the slider at the bottom left of the screen will then allow you to look at the retail developments closest to this kind of town centre. Depending on the development subset chosen in the drop-down boxes, the chart (top right) displays the relevant retail developments closest to these town centres.
Note that for data confidentiality reasons, the graph data are generalised and it is not possible to identify the specific town centres to which they apply.
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The town centres hierarchy
The town centres have been split into 7 groups, based on the CBRE hierarchy and using the 2002 DCLG town centre boundaries.
Geofutures 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). |
Viewing retail locations on the chart
The chart on the top right of the screen shows the chosen subset of retail developments closest to the set of town centres chosen using the slider.
The chart allows you to see the distribution of the development floorspace as the distance from the town centre boundary increases.
All development floorspace in red (and in the first bar) are contained within the town centre boundaries.
Development floorspace typically outside the town centre boundary but within the surrounding urban area is in blue, in the bars that span the length of the arrow below the chart. The surrounding urban area is calculated using the average distance from the town centre boundary to the urban edge.
The remaining development floorspace is represented in green (developments in bars to the right of the end of the arrow below the chart).
The development floorspace is expressed as a percentage of all floorspace in the dataset rather than a total figure in square metres. The reason for this is that there is currently no comprehensive dataset available in either the public or private sectors to enable us to create that picture. A dataset can comprise all completed developments, all completed developments in 1999 (or 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005 or all combined) or all developments in the pipeline.
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