Many would say that high street retailing is dead. The reality is that no high streets have truly perished and very few will be completely wiped out. Yet many are undoubtedly shadows of their former selves, most will never be the same again, and relatively few could be considered in fine fettle.

The global financial crisis sparked a severe downturn that changed consumers’ attitudes towards price and this coincided with rapid structural change in the retail sector. As a result, we reached the end of retail as we knew it.