A new report has suggested that the gap between Britain’s highest and lowest retail rents is continuing to widen, with those in London outstripping the rest of the UK.
Data compiled by property agency Colliers indicated that while rents at units in prime central London locations have rocketed in recent months – driven largely by the increased presence of well-off foreign shoppers – those in provincial towns and cities have tumbled.
Dudley has been one of the towns hardest hit by the ongoing weakness in consumer confidence, with 30 per cent of its town centre stores vacant. The report also revealed rents in some struggling towns are just 2.5 per cent of those in London’s retail hotspots such as Bond Street.
“The rental disparity is the widest since we started monitoring it in 1987,” Colliers research director Richard Doidge told Reuters. “People used to speak about the UK's north-south divide, but it's more accurate to say it's central London versus the rest of the UK, and that's really accelerated in the last two years.”
A study from traveller services firm Global Blue revealed last week that spending south-east Asian tourists in the UK surged by 34 per cent in 2011.
