Last week saw our 18^th Retail and Leisure Trends Summit, held at the beautiful BCLP LLP offices at London Bridge. We had some fantastic speakers who joined us to discuss the theme of ‘Driving Retail Intelligence with Big Data’. For those that missed the event, here is a short round-up of the day:

LDC's latest bi-annual report is out today and provides an update on the impact of market activity across the first six months of this year.

This bi-annual report looks at the entire retail and leisure sector over five years (2012 - 2017), with a focus on changes over 12 months of 2017.

A bank holiday always lifts the spirits and from everyone at LDC we truly hope you had a very "hoppy" Easter! 

February may have been a bit colder than usual, but LDC knows that warm weather is on the horizon (and we are definitely looking forward to it!)

This January we held our 3rd Welsh Retail and Leisure Trends Summit on the beautiful Cardiff University campus. We were lucky enough to be joined by panellists who are heavily involved in the world of Welsh retail and regeneration. These experts provided an overview of their vision for the future for Wales’ local businesses and economy.

At our 5th Scottish Retail and Leisure Trends Summit in partnership with the University of Stirling we interviewed our panel of experts who shared with us their opinions on the current and future state of retail in Scotland, as well as sharing valuable insights on what challenges they foresaw for the Scottish market.

On November 28th, was the Local Data Company’s (LDC) fifth Scottish Retail and Leisure Trends Summit held in partnership with the University of Stirling. The report revealed interesting insights as to how Scottish centres are performing relative to England and Wales but also relative to each other. There was also a short presentation by Chris Fowler of LDC on how data is being captured and used at a local level to understand performance and opportunity with a case study from Aberdeenshire Council on the town of Peterhead.

The latest report by the Institute for Retail Studies - University of Stirling and LDC looks at the latest retail health and trends across Scotland's towns and cities. The report is presented in three sections focusing in turn on retail premises, retail vacancy and retail structure (and associated leisure sector).

• Lowest number of store closures since 2010
• Tobacconists, beauticians and coffee shops thriving
• Shoe shops, women’s clothing and charity shops declining

Despite the advance of online retail and a testing economy, the number of chain retail outlets closing on Great Britain’s high streets is at its lowest level for seven years, PwC research compiled by the Local Data Company (LDC) reveals.