Telford is top UK blackspot for independent shops
Telford is the UK's biggest black spot for independent retailers, a new survey released today has showed.
The study by the Local Data Company claims that the town has the worst ratio of independent retailers in the country, with just 18.4 per cent of its traders being small independents.
However, the study focuses only on the town centre, and not the smaller centres such as Wellington, but dismisses Telford as a "clone town".
Telford led the way from Salford (23.3 per cent), Runcorn (25 per cent) and Yate in Gloucestershire (27.6 per cent).
Nationally, the tide is turning in favour of independent shops, with 44 opening every day in 2013, while 16 chain stores were shutting up shop.
By the year's end, 0.69 per cent more independent retailers were open on Britain's high streets – which was actually a drop on the year before –after a net increase of 726.
Mobile phone shops and beauty parlours led the openings list, while once again women's clothes stores were the biggest faller.
Newsagents also felt the effect of changing shopping habits as they were second on the closures list.
Michael Weedon, deputy chief executive of the British Independent Retailers Association, said: "Independent tailors, bakers, barbers, grocers, hairdressers, confectioners, and coffee bars are on the rise as towns see them replace fashion and shoe shops, jewelers, newsagents and booksellers.
"As chains cut their links one by one with high streets, our towns are showing signs of reverting to older models of economic activity, where they serve the needs of physical customers in physical stores, alter their clothes, style their hair and, less traditionally, mend their broken iPhones.
"The churn is huge, with more than 15,000 independents closing in 2013 - but nearly 16,000 opening their doors for the first time.
"Give an entrepreneur a sniff of an opportunity and a chance of a profit and they will create businesses and fill empty units. Government's role in this is to remove obstacles, dismantle barriers to the profitability of small shops and clear the way for them to lead our towns into a future that incorporates the best of the past."
