Retail Resilience Index lists top-performing U.K. high streets

Cambridge and Guildford top the list of the United Kingdom’s most resilient retail locations, according to Cushman & Wakefield, U.K. High Streets: Dead or Alive? report, which ranks the viability and performance of 250 high streets outside Central London.

Online sales coupled with rising business rates have made survival on the traditional high street increasingly challenging for retailers in the United Kingdom over the past decade.

The Retail Resilience Index ranks 250 towns based on 22 economic, demographic and retail property metrics, most of which have been tracked over a 10-year period, providing a rounded analysis of town performance. These metrics include retailer demand, leisure spend, floor space density, rental change as well as broader economic indicators such as house prices, catchment demographics, business survival rates and tourism spend.

Towns have been ranked according to each variable, with the final placing calculated from the sum of the individual rankings. Locations have then been assigned a Town Tier (one to five, of which one is the highest) based on their overall ranking, to enable a comparison with similar locations.

On an individual town basis, Cambridge, Guildford, Bath, Chichester and Oxford are the high streets that have shown the greatest resilience over the last decade. Conversely, Hamilton, Llandudno, Newport, Greenock, Ramsgate and Kilmarnock prop up the list of 250 sites.

Elsewhere, despite being 71st on the list, the small town of Marlow in Buckinghamshire ranks in first place for both rental growth and retailer demand, benefitting from a wealthy, albeit small, catchment. Further down the ranking, a lack of investment and pressure from competing centers has hindered Gloucester’s performance over the last decade.

To read the report, click here.