Retail centres are diverse and dynamic geographical entities. Developing indicators that can help to understand their characteristics and economic performance can provide useful supporting information for policy in identifying underperforming and/or thriving retail centres across the UK.
The dataset contains aggregated indicators at the retail centre level that contains some commercially sensitive information. These indicators accompany the most recent 2021 iteration of the openly available GeoDS Retail Centre Boundaries (see Related Record link below).
Content
The data supplied is a single CSV file, designed to be linked to the open data.
This is a derived product for the most recent iteration of the GeoDS retail centre boundaries, utilising the LDC retail type and location datasets and other openly accessible datasets. The product contains indicators at the retail centre level, which are split into four domain.
- COMPOSITION – a series of variables that summarise the key compositional differences between retail centres (presence of comparison, convenience, service and leisure retail).
- DIVERSITY – a series of variables summarising key differences in terms of diversity between centres, including the presence of independents and chains, and an aggregate ‘clone town’ score based on the ‘Clone Town Britain methodology’.
- VACANCY – a series of variables summarising key differences in terms of vacancy, including current vacancy rate, long-term vacancy rate and change in vacancy rate.
- E-RESILIENCE – series of variables summarising the relationship of retail centres to online shopping, including the index of supply vulnerability and online exposure index, which are used to create the final E-Resilience score.
The indicators were derived and aggregated from Local Data Company (LDC) data. The LDC is the data partner for this dataset, and applications to use this data are subject to their approval.
Quality, Representation and Bias
The data represent aggregates calculated primarily from the LDC retail type, vacancy and address dataset, which contains near complete coverage of retailers across Great Britain. Coding of retail type (e.g. comparison) varies in consistency between different iterations (e.g. 2016), but have been recalculated and verified for these indicators.
The indicators do not cover all centres as defined by GeoDS. To ensure security, indicators were developed for those retail centres not classified as ‘Small Local Centres’ and containing over 50 LDC units (to exclude areas not surveyed by LDC). In addition, indicators were not developed for any centres in Northern Ireland (due to a lack of LDC data) and for one retail centre in Manchester due to an incorrect boundary.
NA values are given for retail parks and shopping centres for variables in the diversity domain of variables, as such indicators would not prove useful in these instances.
