On Wednesday, 30th March 2016, we held our 5th Retail Market Trends Summit at Hogan Lovells' offices in London. At the event, Matthew Hopkinson presented the latest analysis of openings and closures activity for both independent and multiple retail and leisure occupiers across Great Britain's shopping locations in 2015.

We had the pleasure of welcoming a diverse panel of retail industry experts including: Damien Wild - Editor of the Estate Gazette (who chaired the panel discussion), Anthony Newton - Senior Associate at Hogan Lovells, Eva Pascoe - E-commerce Director at TheRetailPractice, Andrew Angeli - Head of UK Research at CBRE Global Investors, and Michael Weedon - Deputy CEO of bira.

The event was a great success with around 100 professionals from the retail industry. Thank you for everyone that made it! You can find the photos of the event here.

During the event, Matthew Hopkinson presented the latest analysis of openings and closures activity for both independent and multiple retail and leisure occupiers across Great Britain's shopping locations in 2015. 

For those who were unable to make the event, Matthew has summarised the key findings from the report, the questions posed during the panel discussion and topics to keep in mind for 2016.

Data released today by The Local Data Company (LDC) and British Independent Retailers Association (bira) shows that independents opened the fewest number of shops in Britain’s top 500 town centres since LDC records began in 2009. Independent shops saw an increase of just +117 shops (+0.11%) in 2015 versus a peak of growth of 4.01% (+3,949 shops) in 2010.

Analysis of town centres, shopping centres and retail parks shows that chain retailers have continued to decline with a net loss of -1,147 shops (-0.59%) in 2015 across GB, which compares to -1,436 shops (-0.76%) in 2014.

On 4th March, we hosted our 13th Retail Health Summit at BLP's offices in London.

Matthew Hopkinson presented the latest analysis from over 3,000 town centres, shopping centres and retail parks across Great Britain in H2 2015 to over 100 delegates.

For those who were unable to make the event, Matthew has summarised the key findings from the report, the questions posed during the panel discussion and topics to keep in mind for 2016.

A professional photographer took some great photos of the thought leadership event last week at Oxford University. You can view a selection of the best photos from the event on our Flickr page: Oxford Thought Leadership Event.

Earlier this week, 35 leading university academics from England, Scotland and Wales along with business practitioners from Boots, Sainsburys, NewRiver Retail, AO.com, Rightmove, EE, Mitchells & Butler, SEGRO, Lloyds Banking Group, MindFolio, The Retail Practice, Luminar and Legacy Portfolio attended our thought leadership event.

On Tuesday 5th May The Local Data Company in partnership with University of Oxford and the ESRC funded Consumer Data Research Centre will be hosting its inaugural Academic Thought Leadership event.

Last Thursday we hosted our 4th Leisure and Retail Openings and Closures Drinks Reception which was kindly hosted by Hogan Lovells in London.

Our 4th Retail and Leisure Openings & Closures Drinks Reception is only a few days away. With our panel confirmed we wanted to share their bio's with you. Feel free to find out more about each panellist below:

Chair - Samantha Fenwick – Reporter at The BBC