In more gloomy news for high street retailers it’s been revealed that more than one in ten town centre shops are lying empty. The British Retail Consortium (BRC), which has been gathering data on empty shops in town centres since July 2014, announced that the latest vacancy rate of 11.3% was the highest they’ve seen. [...]

  There was sad news for the UK high street yesterday as Clinton Cards was put into administration by its largest supplier. The familiar card shop with over 8,000 staff and over 750 stores had recently seen its bank debt bought up by American Greetings, the second largest player in the world greeting card market [...]

  I just found out that one of my Christmas presents was bought using a smart phone. It was a case of the item that was being hunted down was out of stock so a quick jump online via the phone and the present was purchased with next day delivery. This must be a worry [...]

  High street consultant Mary Portas has published plans for improving the high street and cut business rates. While it has been backed by business groups, landlords and bookmakers are not so sure of the wisdom behind the plans - which include stricter controls on establishing betting shops in deprived areas. The seven-month review highlighted [...]