Britain's Retail Parks Are Nearly Full While High Streets Empty Out

Only 4.8% of British retail park lots stood vacant at the end of 2025 — the lowest level on record, according to real estate consultancy Knight Frank. On the high street, the vacancy rate is nearly triple that, at 13%, as reported by Savills.

Rotherham shows the divide in its sharpest form. Almost 40 years after Parkgate Retail World opened on 22 May 1987 — then thought to be the UK's largest open-air shopping centre — the retail park thrives while the town centre empties. About 70 units in Rotherham town centre, 24% of the total, sit vacant, far above the national average. A derelict BrightHouse branch, shut in 2020, greets visitors leaving the train station. Fultons Foods, closed in 2022, left behind smashed windows and a window sticker reading: "There's always change at Fultons."

Where the shoppers went

Almost half of Britons no longer visit their high street weekly. Retailers now pay premiums to secure retail park space. Robert Gordon, 66, a retired factory production manager who has lived in Rotherham for 24 years, prefers Parkgate. "I think it's ideal. It's got everything here," he told reporters. He concedes the trade-off: "We are part of the problem. It's not progress. You used to meet people, but now you're lucky to see anyone you know."

Jo Hill, 59, and her husband Richard, 65, had not set foot in the town centre for nearly two decades. "What you see is either vape shops, nail shops or charity shops," Jo said. For big purchases, the couple chooses Parkgate or Meadowhall, one of the UK's largest indoor shopping centres, which bookends the town at the opposite end.

What is keeping people away?

Crime compounds the problem. A 2023 government analysis found 160 crimes per 1,000 people in Rotherham town, 72% above the then national average. Police data shows 1,105 crimes in central Rotherham this August alone, including 356 violent and sexual offences and 188 shoplifting incidents. Nearby Sheffield city centre recorded 836 crimes in the same period.

Donna, who owns a furniture shop, says she now serves four or five customers a day, with takings down to "virtually nothing." "People will only come if they feel safe," she said. "Now their families won't let them come out." Saj, who runs a sandwich deli nearby, agrees footfall is nonexistent.

Parking matters too. Parkgate advertises more than 2,000 free spaces; the town centre offers 1,610, most of them paid until recently. Rotherham council cut long-stay charges from £6.50 to £3.50 a day in 2016 and introduced one free weekday hour last year. Many residents say it is not enough. Car ownership has climbed from 52% of British households in 1971 to nearly three-quarters by 2022.

How did Britain get here?

The out-of-town model arrived with the Gem Superstore in West Bridgford, Nottingham, in 1964 — 110,000 sq ft, opened by Goldfinger star Shirley Eaton before 30,000 shoppers. Asda bought the site two years later for its first superstore. London's Brent Cross followed in 1976, and after the Tories entered Downing Street in 1979, planning rules eased. The UK had one out-of-town retail park in 1981, 90 by 1988 and 385 by the end of 1996.

"There is a change of attitude in the 1980s which begins to allow these out-of-town locations," said Alistair Kefford, chair of urban studies at Leiden University. He is blunt about the consequences: "If you build a wonderful, shiny, exciting new shopping mall or retail park, it doesn't create a lot of new shoppers. They just stop going somewhere else."

The numbers back him. In 2024, 13,479 shops closed across the UK. Retail accounts for just 5% of the economy and under a tenth of employment, yet, as Eddie Blake of Studio Weave put it: "Dying high streets make people feel ashamed of their place, that their life is falling apart." Research by the thinktank Power to Change found higher support for Reform UK in areas with run-down high streets.

Can policy reverse it?

Chancellor John Healey, whose constituency includes Parkgate, has promised "blighted" high streets will soon be "on the up." Last month, Andy Burnham announced £210m to regenerate struggling high streets. Kefford is sceptical: "Retail is a barometer — it's not an engine." He warns that decline snowballs: "Once a location has set off down a particular path, it's very hard to get out of it."

He believes the shops themselves "are probably not going to come back," and argues for reimagining town centres around housing, churches, clubs and theatres, as in the 1950s and 1960s. The caveat is political will and time; nobody in Rotherham is betting on a reversal. The No 8 bus from Parkgate still arrives carrying bags from Primark, TK Maxx and Sports Direct.