A STAGGERING 17,350 shops could shutter this year because of Labour’s tax-whacking Budget, economists have warned.
Experts braced Britain for a high street cull far beyond the 13,000 stores that closed during 2024.
The Centre for Retail Research said there was “worse to come” in the next 12 months as firms struggle to stay afloat.
Rachel Reeves’ decision to hike National Insurance for bosses, increase wage costs and lack of business rates relief have been blamed for the grim outlook.
The CRR’s Prof Joshua Bamfield, said: “The results for 2024 show that although the outcomes for store closures overall were not as poor as in either 2020 or 2022, they are still disconcerting, with worse set to come in 2025.”
Of the 17,350 forecast to close, around 14,660 are expected to be smaller, independent retailers.
Although major chains including Ted Baker, Homebase and Carpetright also shut stores after going insolvent during the year.
It comes on the back of a tough 2024 when 13,000 shops closed their doors for good, already a 28 per cent increase on the previous year.
Commercial real estate firm Altus Group said the cut in the business rates discount from 75% to 40% in April announced at the 2024 autumn budget, will see the average shop’s rates bill spiral from £3,589 to £8,613 for 2025/26.
The Chancellor also increased costs for bosses through hikes to their National Insurance Contributions from 13.8 to 15 per cent.
She also raised the minimum wage to £12.21 an hour from April 2025.
EMPTY shops have become an eyesore on many British high streets and are often symbolic of a town centre’s decline.
The Sun’s business editor Ashley Armstrong explains why so many retailers are shutting their doors.
In many cases, retailers are shutting stores because they are no longer the money-makers they once were because of the rise of online shopping.
Falling store sales and rising staff costs have made it even more expensive for shops to stay open. In some cases, retailers are shutting a store and reopening a new shop at the other end of a high street to reflect how a town has changed.
The problem is that when a big shop closes, footfall falls across the local high street, which puts more shops at risk of closing.
Retail parks are increasingly popular with shoppers, who want to be able to get easy, free parking at a time when local councils have hiked parking charges in towns.
Many retailers including Next and Marks & Spencer have been shutting stores on the high street and taking bigger stores in better-performing retail parks instead.
Boss Stuart Machin recently said that when it relocated a tired store in Chesterfield to a new big store in a retail park half a mile away, its sales in the area rose by 103 per cent.
In some cases, stores have been shut when a retailer goes bust, as in the case of Wilko, Debenhams Topshop, Dorothy Perkins and Paperchase to name a few.
What’s increasingly common is when a chain goes bust a rival retailer or private equity firm snaps up the intellectual property rights so they can own the brand and sell it online.
They may go on to open a handful of stores if there is customer demand, but there are rarely ever as many stores or in the same places.
