The high street will certainly look very different for the consumers who do make it out of the house for holiday season shopping this year—when they’re allowed. According to data from the Local Data Company (LDC) and PwC UK, there was a record number of store closures in the UK in H1 2020—11,120. (For the purposes of comparison, the study defined H1 2020 as January through August 2020, with no fieldwork conducted during the March–June nationwide lockdown.) Though 5,119 stores opened during this period, the net decline of 6,001 stores represents almost double the decline during H1 2019 (3,509 stores).
In a press release for the LDC and PwC UK research, Lucy Stainton, head of retail and strategic partnerships at LDC, said, “The results from H1 2020 are a stark reminder of the challenges faced by retailers in the first six months of the year, which included a national lockdown. There are signs that this is just the tip of the iceberg, as 22% of the multiple market [retailers with multiple sites are] still closed temporarily.
“With each week that passes since retail and hospitality businesses were given the green light to reopen, the likelihood of these occupiers ever trading again in those units reduces. This, alongside the impact of local lockdowns and other restrictions … will continue to have a devastating impact on the sector with more closures likely to fall in Q1 2021 following the busier golden quarter.”
The last thing that physical retailers needed going into this golden quarter was further restrictions. On October 12, the UK government acted to suppress rising rates of COVID-19 infections in specific regions of the country by implementing a three-tier alert system, whereby each region’s restrictions varied depending on its infection rate and the tier it was placed on.
On October 31, the government announced that this system would be superseded by another nationwide lockdown, running from November 5 through the end of the month. Although restrictions won’t be quite as severe as those of the earlier lockdown, all nonessential retailers will be required to close their doors once again.