These indicators accompany the most recent 2021 iteration of the openly available CDRC Retail Centre Boundaries:

https://data.cdrc.ac.uk/dataset/retail-centre-boundaries

The dataset contains aggregated indicators at the retail centre level to help better understand their relative characteristics and economic performance. These can be useful in supporting information for policy in identifying underperforming and/or thriving retail centres across the UK.

The product is split into four domains: Composition, Diversity, Vacancy and E-Resilience.

Composition – a series of variables that summarise the key compositional differences between retail centres (presence of comparison, convenience, service and leisure retail).

Diversity – a series of variables summarising key differences in terms of diversity between centres, including the presence of independents and chains, and an aggregate ‘clone town’ score based on the ‘Clone Town Britain methodology’.

Vacancy – a series of variables summarising key differences in terms of vacancy, including current vacancy rate, long-term vacancy rate and change in vacancy rate.

E-Resilience – series of variables summarising the relationship of retail centres to online shopping, including the index of supply vulnerability and online exposure index, which are used to create the final E-Resilience score.

The indicators were derived and aggregated from Local Data Company (LDC) data. The LDC is the data partner for this dataset, and applications to use this data are subject to their approval.

The following statement should be included when citing the use of this dataset:

“The data for this research have been provided by the Consumer Data Research Centre, an ESRC data investment, under project ID CDRC [Project Number], ES/L011840/1; ES/L011891/1”.