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Published
Aug 29, 2017
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Most BHS stores still empty after more than a year

Published
Aug 29, 2017

The continuing fallout from the BHS failure last year and the news that Poland’s Reserved will open in the old BHS flagship on Oxford Street has thrown the spotlight back onto BHS and the large number of empty stores the chain’s collapse has left behind.


Most BHS sites remain empty over a year after the retailer collapsed



Now it has emerged that almost 82% of the previous BHS sites are still empty. Of those, some have been acquired and are awaiting planning permission for their new occupants or wider redevelopment. But 96 of the 160 stores (or 60% of the total) look set to remain vacant for the foreseeable future with no new tenants on the horizon.

The figures from from the Local Data Company (LDC), prepared for The Times newspaper and the BBC.

The difficulty with letting many of the stores is due to their large size. Unless a larger number of tenants can be found when they’re divided into multiple units, parts will still lie empty and few retailers are lining up to open new stores when they will be surrounded by empty space.

And as retailers generally rein-in their opening plans in the face of the online onslaught, it’s hard to find any prepared to open a large-format store. The opening by small department store chain Morleys in a converted BHS site in Bexleyheath this spring was the exception rather than the rule.

That leaves a huge challenge for landlords and local authorities looking to regenerate rundown malls and high streets and the migration of big-name chains such as Next and M&S to retail parks for their larger stores only adds to the issue.
No UK region has a re-occupancy rate for BHS stores above 50% and in the Southwest only one out of 15 has been let. In the east of England the figure is one store out of 17. In Scotland, all 16 stores are still empty.

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