Newport City Council is “determined to transform the city centre to be fit for the 21st century” and agrees that the number of retail units needs to be reduced.
The local authority was responding to a report from Centre for Cities, which highlighted the number of empty units in the city centre, but also noted a significant drop in the number of empty units since the last report in 2022.
The council said the report acknowledged that the statistics are “significantly impacted” by the oversupply of retail properties in the city centre.
Newport has the largest amount of retail space per head than any of the other 62 centres that are featured.
This means that while the number of occupied premises is similar to some other places, including high-performing retail centres such as Milton Keynes, this is masked by the oversupply of commercial units, said the council.
Council leader Councillor Dimitri Batrouni said:
“We absolutely agree that the number of retail units in the city centre needs to be reduced as the centre is too big for present day demand.
“The challenge is that city centre properties are mainly privately owned, sometimes by absent and neglectful landlords and it will require significant investment to achieve a reduction.
“However, we are determined to transform our city centre to be fit for the 21st century. The placemaking plan set outs proposals to start that process. In due course, we will be setting out further ambitious plans for our centre.”
Figures collected in 2021 for the Centre for Cities report claimed that around a third were empty. The council disputed this at the time, saying that its own figures showed that just under a quarter were vacant.
Confirmed new figures show that less than a fifth of commercial units in the city centre, or 19 per cent, are presently unoccupied.
The report also highlights increasing footfall figures. In the first quarter of this year, it was 10 per cent higher than in the first quarter of 2019.
The council also highlighted that just 63 centres are surveyed for this report – around a third of large towns or cities and a fraction of the total number of cities and towns in the UK. It said that apart from Newport and Leicester, no other city or town featured in the report provided vacancy data so their vacancy figures had been based on modelling.
The authority said that in Newport properties are physically counted every six months.
Councillor Batrouni added:
“It is important we look at what we do have in the city centre, not what we don’t. This includes our fantastic independent businesses – more than 320 or 60 per cent of the total; some unique and exciting retail, leisure and hospitality venues; community and cultural hubs and a mix of living options.
“We also have some fantastic events organised by the council and others including the forthcoming Big Splash, the popular October Food Festival, Festive Newport, the Newport Music Trail and more. There’s also going to be lots going on over the summer holidays to keep people of all ages entertained.”
- Kevin Ward, manager of Newport’s Business Improvement District Newport Now, has written for Business News Wales on what the Centre for Cities report means for the city. Read his column here.
