Study warns one in five High Street shops could be shuttered by 2018
The Centre for Retail Research has published a study into UK High Streets which predicts that by 2018 as many as one in five stores could have closed down.
The gloomy prognosis for the next five years comes amidst the growing migration of people to the internet for their shopping, a shift which could result in 62,000 stores closing their doors.
It is expected that the proportion of shopping done via the internet will double to 22 per cent over this time frame with pharmacies, health and beauty stores likely to be amongst the first affected.
Next in line will be specialists in music, books, cards, stationery and gifts with DIY shops falling not far behind with all this redundant real estate is likely to be remodelled as housing.
Contrasting the sharply diverging costs associated with a High Street shop or out of town warehouse the CRR estimate the former to cost as much as £10k a month and the latter as little as £650 a month.
At present there are an estimated 280,000 shops across the country with the comparable figure for 2018 put at 220,000.