How our High Streets changed over the Covid lockdowns

“We are a traditional nation of small shopkeepers. We decided we would provide more of a location where tourists and locals can come to with smaller, independent retailers inside – the fantastic artisans, the entrepreneurs, the producers of Cumbrian food.”The number of clothes shops operating in Britain is down 4,300, a fall of 8.5%. The collapse of the Arcadia retail empire in 2020 saw Burtons, Dorothy Perkins, Wallis, Topshop and Miss Selfridge all disappear from our shopping streets. More than 800 High Street banks and building societies closed their doors during the pandemic (-8.1%) along with the loss of more than 6,000 cash machines (-13.2%). The changes suggest the pandemic accelerated the move away from physical cash-based retail to card-based online shopping.