A report detailing the economic health of high streets across Wales has found the percentage of empty shops in Bangor has fallen from 25.4% in 2013 to 19.4% in 2017.

The Welsh Retail and Leisure Trends report summary 2017 looked at the leading towns and cities, which were identified by considering all locations in Wales that have 40 or more premises with retail or leisure use. The stand-alone regional shopping centres and warehouse parks were excluded from the analysis. The result is 73 places – 69 towns and four cities (Bangor, Cardiff, Newport and Swansea).

Whilst designated as a city for the purpose of the study, Bangor has a similar retail scale as many of the medium sized towns in Wales. The cities of Cardiff, Swansea and Newport are the largest settlements in terms of numbers of retail premises but there are a number of towns which have more retail premises than Bangor (191) in 2017. These include Wrexham (349), Llandudno (260) and Rhyl (251) in the North, Bridgend (236), Neath (198) and Abergavenny (193) in the South, and Carmarthen (297) and Aberystwyth (212) in the West.

The report is focused on retail premises, retail vacancy and retail structure, giving a more detailed picture of the retail sector in our leading towns and cities and the ways in which this has changed since 2013.

Supermarkets continue to dominate the share of household consumer spend, with the discount stores increasing their market share (Aldi and Lidl growing at 15% annually), whilst out-of-town shopping centres pull consumers away from the smaller towns and high streets.

Cardiff and Swansea have seen a marked decline in retail premises in the past 12 months whilst Newport and Bangor have experienced very little change.

Except for Bangor, cities are becoming more leisure orientated, as are coastal towns, and cities have seen the most marked decline in the retail proportion over the past four years, while Bangor has seen the largest increase in leisure vacancy over the last four years, 8.6%, although this trend has slowed in recent years.

Independent Retailers

The towns with the most independent retailers also continue to have some of the lowest vacancy rates, which show the benefit independent retailers have on the retail performance of a town or city in helping to occupy retail spaces.

The proportion of independent retailers has increased overall since 2013 by 4 percentage points although two fifths of towns have experienced a decline, down from the previous year.

The percentage of independent retailers in Bangor has risen to 40.8% up from 37.2% in 2013, which compares favourably with Newport 35.3% and Cardiff 30.4%, however in Conwy 87.5% of retailers are independent.

Persistent vacancy

Persistent vacancy describes a unit which has been vacant for more than three years and is a measure of problems or redundancy in the stock.

Bangor has 9.9% of all retail units classified as being persistently vacant (Over 3 years) with 51.4% of all vacant retail units in the city being empty for over 3 years.

Charity Shops

The presence of charity shop retailing is a feature of most high streets and there are very different views about the benefits of charity shops in the retail scene. Only 14 towns have 5% or more of their premises occupied by charity shops, a decrease from last year (18 towns), with Holyhead, Cardigan, Llangefni and Porthmadog having the highest proportion.

Bangor has 4.3% Charity shops, a slight increase from last year, with Llangefni at 6.8% and Holyhead 6.7%.

Booze, Money and Gambling

The report also looked at the presence of bookmakers, off-licences and cheque-cashing businesses – the so-called Booze, Money and Gambling (BMG) Index which reports the proportion of retailers in these classifications.

Cities have relatively low BMG indexes compared to towns and there has been a decline in the indexes for all cities in the past four years although they have generally been consistent for the last 12 months. Cardiff (1.8%) Newport (1.6%) and Bangor (1.3%) have seen reductions in Booze, Money and Gambling (BMG) units over the last year, whereas Swansea’s (2.2%) BMG Index has stayed roughly the same.