The UK’s retail development pipeline for the next five years has fallen by 15% to 8.4m sq ft as a tougher retail climate dampens demand says Colliers CRE.

In a report released yesterday at the BCSC conference in Gateshead it said the total amount of shopping centre floorspace scheduled for completion between 2007 and 2012 currently stands at 44.5m sq ft , compared to 52.9m sq ft at this time last year.

Retailers feel pain

It said: ‘The recent interest rate rises have led to heavy discounting by many retailers to resist falling levels of sales - and a number of high street fashion retailers are struggling as a result of cutbacks in consumer expenditure on discretionary goods.

‘Combined with the refusal of some planning applications, a more difficult funding market and caution from developers, who deem some proposals to be no longer viable, this means that, within the current development pipeline, more schemes are completing than are being added – so the overall volume is falling.’

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