Muddled Thinking

Remember Clone Town Britain (2005) by The New Economics Foundation (nef)? All right-thinking middle class people agreed with the conclusion that many our towns were dominated by national multiples and this was a Bad Thing. What we really needed was more representation from local independent retailers.

Well nef has recently has recently updated its league tables in Re-imagining the high street - Escape from Clone Town Britain. It asserts that multiple retailers are fair-weather friends, shutting up shop in the recession, leaving holes in the high street. It tells us “The towns most dependent on the biggest chains and out of town stores have proven to be most vulnerable in the economic crisis.”

So what is the UK’s worst clone town (and therefore the most vulnerable in the economic crisis)? Cambridge. Eh? Yes, Cambridge – followed by Exeter.

And who is worst off on the clone town scale in London? The deprived area of Richmond, closely followed by Putney, Hammersmith, Clapham and Hampstead. Meanwhile, the vibrant and fashionable shopping centres of Finsbury Park, Wembley, Shepherds Bush and Brentford are testament to the attraction of a high number of independents.

You may be forgiven for thinking something must be amiss. It is. The nef methodology is severely flawed. The score is assessed by members of the public who look at about 40-60 shops in what they regard as the heart of the high street. The score is calculated by adding the number of different types of shop (irrespective of sample size) to 0.75 times the percentage of independent shops. So if there are 18 different types of shop and 20% are independent, the clone score would be 18 + 0.75 x 20 = 18 + 15 = 33. A low score is “Bad” and a high score is “Good”

This methodology clearly takes no account of size of centre or the affluence of its catchment. So it favours small towns and discriminates against regional centres and large towns with strong secondary areas dominated by independents. The methodology takes no account of the Lanes in Brighton or the Pantiles in Tunbridge Wells. It discriminates against those places where you have clusters of similar shops. (Bad news for Hay-on-Wye.) And it implicitly claims that Torrington in Devon or Finsbury Park offer better shopping than Cambridge or Exeter. We’ve been to all of them and we can say it ain’t so.

So whilst we agree with some of the sentiments in Re-imagining the high street - Escape from Clone Town Britain, many of its conclusions are based on the flawed foundations of its survey methodology.

If you are interested in the dynamics of retailing and the rather schizophrenic approach that government has taken in framing its planning and competition policies take a look at http://www.hewdon.com/retailpolicy.pdf