PLAN TO RESCUE BRITAIN'S FAILING HIGH STREETS

£5 billion needed to remodel towns and cities where up to one in five shops is empty

- By DAVID DUBAS-FISHER

HERE are calls for £5 billion to remodel struggling city centres where as many as one in five shops are empty.

Newport has a higher proportion of empty shops on its high street than anywhere else in the UK.

Some 19% of shops - just shy of one in five - are vacant according to a new report from the Centre for Cities which reveals a striking divide in the state of the UK’s high streets.

Bradford doesn’t fare much better with 18% of shops sitting empty, equivalent to more than one out of every six.

In Blackpool, the proportion is 17.6% and in Basildon it’s 17.4%.

Those rates are more than twice as high as in the most bustling high streets in the country.

Just 7.4% of shops in London are vacant, which is around one in every 14 stores and the lowest rate of any high street in the Centre for Cities report.

Cambridge has the next lowest rate at 8.5%, followed by Oxford at 9.0%, York at 9.2% and Brighton also at 9.2%.

The report has found that the towns and cities with the highest vacancy rates tend to have too many stores relative to their population.