The UK lost about 37 shops a day during 2024 in yet another brutal year for the high street, data suggests.
Almost 13,500 retail stores closed for good in the last 12 months, a rise of 28% on 2023 – although the losses were below the levels seen each year between 2019 and 2022, according to provisional figures compiled by the Centre for Retail Research.
The group’s research director, Prof Joshua Bamfield, said: “The results for 2024 show that although the outcomes for store closures overall were not as poor as in either 2020 or 2022, they are still disconcerting, with worse set to come in 2025.”
He said the research group expected store closures to rise by the same factor again during 2025, to about 17,350, with approximately 14,660 coming from independent retailers.
Pressure on retailers, particularly independents, has been a long-running theme for the high street, although new challenges are emerging alongside the more persistent threats.
The commercial real estate firm Altus Group argued that the planned cut in the business rates discount from 75% to 40% in April, which was announced at the 2024 autumn budget, would make trading even tougher for retailers. It estimates that the average shop’s rates bill will rise from £3,589 to £8,613 for 2025-26.
“Despite Labour’s manifesto recognition of the undue burden business rates place on our high streets, that burden will be significantly increased,” said Altus’s president, Alex Probyn.
Labour’s general election manifesto pledged to “replace the business rates system [in England], so we can raise the same revenue but in a fairer way”. It added: “This new system will level the playing field between the high street and online giants, better incentivise investment, tackle empty properties and support entrepreneurship.”
In October, the Treasury published a discussion paper on how the government would deliver this pledge during this parliament.
The latest data on store closures suggests that during the 2024 calendar year 13,479 shops in high streets, main shopping destinations, towns and villages, as well as small shopping parades, closed for good – up 28.4% on the 10,494 shops that closed in the previous year.
Independent retailers, typically those small businesses operating between one and five stores, accounted for 84.1% of all store closures during 2024 as those shutdowns soared by more than 45%, the Centre for Retail Research said. In the previous calendar year, independents were responsible for 74.5% of all store closures, or 7,793.
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More than half of all stores closed, 7,537, were shut after retailers underwent some form of insolvency proceedings, while 5,942 shops were closed through “rationalisation” as part of cost-cutting programmes by large retailers or independents simply shutting up shop for good.
During 2024, a series of big chains collapsed, including Homebase, the Body Shop, Lloyds Pharmacy, Carpetright and Ted Baker.
The store closures data comes after the Centre for Retail Research disclosed on Monday that almost 170,000 UK retail workers lost their jobs during 2024.
