The pandemic has cost cities in Wales more than 22 weeks’ worth of high street sales. according to new research from Centre for Cities.
The economic think tank has published Cities Outlook 2022, its annual assessment of the UK’s largest urban areas and how they have been impacted by Covid.
It found that Covid-19 has cost some city centres in Wales almost half a year’s worth of potential takings since March 2020.
Central Cardiff is worst affected, losing 43 weeks of sales between the first lockdown and the onset of the latest Omicron variant. Businesses in Swansea and Newport city centres have also been hard hit.
In prosperous city centres, lost sales are linked to an increase in business closures.
The number of empty storefronts in Cardiff city centre increased by around six percentage points as sales fell — the fifth highest rise in Great Britain.
While central Newport has more vacant units than anywhere else in Great Britain.
The report also found that Covid-19 has cost businesses in city and large town centres across the UK more than a third (35%) of their potential takings since March 2020, with central London, Birmingham, Edinburgh and Cardiff worst affected.
In the 52 city and town centres studied, 2426 commercial units have become vacant during the pandemic, against 1374 between 2018 and 2020.
It concluded that high streets in economically weaker places have been less impacted by Covid-19, but economically stronger places have seen business closures increase during the pandemic.
This suggested that government Covid-19 support successfully stalled the decline of many struggling high streets, but was less effective in economically stronger places due to higher rents and a lack of custom from office workers.
While these stronger city centres, including the Welsh capital, have borne the economic brunt of the pandemic, their higher levels of affluence mean that, if restrictions end and office workers return, they will likely recover quickly.
While government support during the pandemic, both Welsh and UK, has sheltered weaker places, the report showed that it may have simply stored up pain in these smaller Welsh towns for the future and warned that many less prosperous places in Wales face a wave of new business closures this year.
To avoid permanently levelling down prosperous places, Centre for Cities suggested policy makers run campaigns to encourage leisure visitors back when safe to do so and provide part-time season tickets to encourage workers back to the office.
It added ministers should focus on dealing with struggling places’ fundamental economic problems to address high street decline. This means investing in skills and ways to strengthen the wider local economy to increase money in shoppers’ pockets, rather than on ‘cosmetic’ quick fixes such as hanging baskets and painting shop fronts.
Andrew Carter, chief executive of Centre for Cities, said: “While the pandemic has been a tough time for all high streets it has levelled down more prosperous cities and towns in Wales. Despite this, the strength of their wider local economies means they are well placed to recover quickly from the past two years.”
“The bigger concern is for economically weaker places – primarily in the North and Midlands – where Covid-19 has actually paused their long-term decline. To help them avoid a wave of high street closures this year the government must set out how it plans to increase peoples’ skills and pay to give them the income needed to sustain a thriving high street. Many of these places are in the so-called Red Wall so there is a political imperative for the Government to act fast, as well as an economic one.”
