Can cafe culture and more social opportunities save the high street?

Published

4 years ago

October 19, 2021

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As we begin to hit the shops ahead of Christmas, retail sales are back to pre-pandemic levels for the first time since restrictions eased in April.

We are now spending more on items like clothing and furnishings than we were in February 2020, according to real-time credit and debit card data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

But Sky News analysis of new data from the Local Data Company suggests there are fewer shops for us to visit – and that the slump of the high street long pre-dated the pandemic.

The decline of the British pub has been well-documented, but since 2016, retail shops have experienced similar closures. The number of retail units in Great Britain has fallen almost 7% over the past decade.

But many of them are being replaced by hospitality outlets. Since 2013, the number of independent cafes and tearooms has risen 10% and the number of chain coffee shops has increased by 7%.

Is cafe culture spreading across the UK?

The fastest growth has been in the East of England and the West Midlands, which now have almost a fifth more cafes and coffee shops as they had in 2013.

The North West has also experienced relatively rapid growth and now has the second highest density of hospitality venues after London at 28 per 100,000 people.

Of course, the capital has long been the cafe-centre of the UK. But while it still has by far the most cafes, coffee shops and tearooms per 100,000 people at almost 43, there’s only been modest growth since 2013.

Professor Michael Kenny, director of the Bennett Institute of Public Policy, says that many places are rebuilding their high streets around social spaces.

“There’s evidence to suggest that the more social opportunities there are, the more likely it is that people will spend more time and – some research suggests – more money in the town centre,” he says.

The government’s High Streets Task Force found that more retail-dependent high streets experienced a larger decline in footfall in the year to June 2020 than those also offering shoppers a range of social and leisure services.

This chimes with a survey by business consultancy CACI, which found that consumers who visit cafes and restaurants spend around 48% more in the surrounding retail businesses.

So, how are the UK’s high streets faring?

Despite the pick up in spending ahead of Christmas, average high-street footfall at the start of November was still only three-quarters of the level it was in early 2020, and as low as 53% in London, according to data from Centre for Cities.

Footfall has returned to normal in only a handful of places like Blackpool and Southend.

The Centre for Cities data compares today’s footfall with average levels in February and March 2020. One reason for the differences between cities could be seasonal variations, such as more people travelling to seaside towns during half-term holidays.

However, Valentine Quinio, an analyst at the Centre for Cities, says that this is unlikely to affect the most recent data.

“Comparing November to February, I would assume there’s not that much difference in terms of seasonality,” she says. “When we look at what’s happened in the first week of November, that’s post-half term and so we’re looking at a normal period.”

Is this helping to level up the rest of the UK?

A comparison of the Centre for Cities’ high street recovery index with pre-pandemic average earnings shows that poorer areas have bounced back quicker.

Ms Quinio says that city size and affluence are key determinants of a high street’s recovery.

“Large cities tend to have a high proportion of office jobs, which can be done from home and that’s of course related to affluence,” she says.

“The fact that people are still reluctant to go back to the office explains why we’re still seeing slower recovery in larger cities, while smaller places rely a bit more on the weekend trade and that’s bounced back.”

But, this will not necessarily help to level up smaller, less affluent areas, as many of them had relatively weak local economies to start with.

“In many of these places, the levelling up challenges that they faced – lack of footfall, lack of consumer spending power, high vacancy rates on the high street – all these issues are still there and still need to be addressed,” she says.

“It’s not the restaurant that attracts the high-skilled jobs, it’s the opposite. That means to address the levelling up agenda we need to invest in skills and we need to make city centres a good place to do business.”

The Data and Forensics team is a multi-skilled unit dedicated to providing transparent journalism from Sky News. We gather, analyse and visualise data to tell data-driven stories. We combine traditional reporting skills with advanced analysis of satellite images, social media and other open source information. Through multimedia storytelling we aim to better explain the world while also showing how our journalism is done.

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Business

HSBC ‘being attacked all the time’ by online criminals – as boss ‘kept awake at night’ by cyber threat

Published

5 hours ago

May 20, 2025

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HSBC 'being attacked all the time' by online criminals - as boss 'kept awake at night' by cyber threat

The boss of one of the UK’s biggest banks says it is being attacked “all the time” by online criminals and he is kept up at night by cyber threats.

“It does keep me awake,” HSBC UK chief executive Ian Stuart told the Treasury Committee of MPs.

“Because we can be attacked and we are being attacked all the time.”

Money blog: ‘Highest ever’ bank switching offer launches

Mr Stuart said banks were spending “enormous” sums of hundreds of millions of pounds on IT systems – the biggest expense in their businesses.

“Cybersecurity is now very much at the top of our agenda,” he added.

Concerns were also highlighted by Lloyds Bank chief executive Charlie Nunn, who said financial fraud will get worse if banks cannot intervene to prevent it and social media and telecoms companies are not incentivised to halt it.

Mr Nunn said the UK “has become the home of fraud”, adding that the number of victims is “pretty disturbing” and “individual cases are harrowing”.

Major high street businesses, including M&S and the Co-op, have been hit by cyber attacks in recent weeks and had their operations impacted.

Cybersecurity threats, however, were not behind the several-day outage at Barclays at the end of January, its UK chief executive Vim Maru said.

He added: “We’ve learned the lessons. We’re acting on the lessons, both work done internally, but also with help from third parties as well.

Account holders across the UK have suffered a spate of IT glitches from different banks around paydays this year.

Tens of millions of pounds on IT have been spent and customer glitches have fallen, Mr Maru said.

He added that the problem at Barclays was a software issue, saying: “We put a fix in place that means that we won’t have a recurrence.”

Business

Steel tycoon Gupta in last-ditch bid to rescue UK empire

Published

15 hours ago

May 20, 2025

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Steel tycoon Gupta in last-ditch bid to rescue UK empire

The steel tycoon Sanjeev Gupta is mounting a last-ditch bid to salvage his British operations after seeing an emergency plea for government support rejected.

Sky News has learnt that Mr Gupta’s Liberty Speciality Steels UK (SSUK) arm is seeking to adjourn a winding-up petition scheduled to be heard in court on Wednesday.

The petition is reported to have been brought by Harsco Metals Group, a supplier of materials and labour to SSUK, and is said to be supported by other trade creditors.

Unless the adjournment is granted, Mr Gupta faces the prospect of seeing SSUK forced into compulsory liquidation.

That would raise questions over the future of roughly 1,450 more steel industry jobs, weeks after the government stepped in to rescue the larger British Steel amid a row with its Chinese owner over the future of its Scunthorpe steelworks.

If Mr Gupta’s operations do enter compulsory liquidation, the Official Receiver would appoint a special manager to run the operations while a buyer is sought.

A Whitehall insider said talks had taken place in recent days involving Mr Gupta’s executives and the Insolvency Service.

Steel industry sources said the government could conceivably be interested in reuniting the Rotherham plant of SSUK with British Steel’s Scunthorpe site because of the industrial synergies between them, although it was unclear whether any such discussions had been held.

Mr Gupta is said to have explored whether he could persuade the government to step in and support SSUK using the legislation enacted last month to take control of British Steel’s operations.

Whitehall insiders said, however, that Mr Gupta’s overtures had been rebuffed.

He had previously sought government aid during the pandemic but that plea was also rejected by ministers.

The SSUK division operates across sites including at Rotherham in south Yorkshire and Bolton in Lancashire.

It makes highly engineered steel products for use in sectors such as aerospace, automotive and oil and gas.

A restructuring plan due to be launched last week was abandoned at the eleventh hour after failing to secure support from creditors of Greensill, the collapsed supply chain finance provider to which Mr Gupta was closely tied.

Under that plan, creditors, including HM Revenue and Customs, would have been forced to write off a significant chunk of the money they are owed.

The company said last week that it had invested nearly £200m in the last five years into the UK steel industry, but had faced “significant challenges due to soaring energy costs and an over-reliance on cheap imports, negatively impacting the performance of all UK steel companies”.

It adds: The court’s ability to sanction the plan depended on finalisation of an agreement with creditors.

“This has not proved possible in an acceptable timeframe, and so Liberty has decided to withdraw the plan ahead of the sanction hearing on May 15 and will now quickly consider alternative options.”

One source close to Liberty Steel acknowledged that it was running out of time to salvage the business.

They said, however, that an adjournment of Wednesday’s hearing to consider the winding-up petition could yet buy the company sufficient breathing space to stitch together an alternative rescue deal.

A Liberty Steel spokesperson said on Tuesday: “Discussions continue with creditors.

“Liberty understands the concern this will create for Speciality Steel UK colleagues and remains committed to doing all it can to maintain the Speciality Steel UK business.”

The Insolvency Service and the Department for Business and Trade have also been contacted for comment.

Business

Daily Mail-owner Rothermere eyes minority Telegraph stake in RedBird deal

Published

1 day ago

May 19, 2025

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Daily Mail-owner Rothermere eyes minority Telegraph stake in RedBird deal

The publisher of the Daily Mail has held talks in recent days about taking a minority stake in the Telegraph newspapers as part of a deal to end the two-year impasse over their ownership.

Sky News has learnt that Lord Rothermere, who controls Daily Mail & General Trust (DMGT), was in detailed negotiations late last week which would have seen him taking a 9.9% stake in the Telegraph titles.

It was unclear on Monday whether the talks were still live or whether they would result in a deal, with one adviser suggesting that the discussions may have faltered.

One insider said that if DMGT did acquire a stake in the Telegraph, the transaction would be used as a platform to explore the sharing of costs across the two companies.

They would, however, remain editorially independent.

Sources said that RedBird and IMI, whose joint venture owns a call option to convert debt secured against the Telegraph into equity, were hoping to announce a deal for the future ownership of the media group this week, potentially on Thursday.

However, the insider suggested that a transaction could yet be struck without any involvement from DMGT.

The progress in the talks to seal new ownership for the right-leaning titles comes days after the government said it would allow foreign state investors to hold stakes of up to 15% in British national newspapers.

That would pave the way for Abu Dhabi royal family-controlled IMI to own 15% of the Daily and Sunday Telegraph – a prospect which has sparked outrage from critics including the former Spectator editor Fraser Nelson.

The decision to set the ownership threshold at 15% follows an intensive lobbying campaign by newspaper industry executives concerned that a permanent outright ban could cut off a vital source of funding to an already-embattled industry.

RedBird Capital, the US-based fund, has already said it is exploring the possibility of taking full control of the Telegraph, while IMI would have – if the status quo had been maintained – been forced to relinquish any involvement in the right-leaning broadsheets.

Other than RedBird, a number of suitors for the Telegraph have expressed interest but struggled to raise the funding for a deal.

The most notable of these has been Dovid Efune, owner of The New York Sun, who has been trying for months to raise the £550m sought by RedBird IMI to recoup its outlay.

On Sunday, the Financial Times reported that Mr Efune has secured backing from Jeremy Hosking, the prominent City investor.

Another potential offer from Todd Boehly, the Chelsea Football Club co-owner, and media tycoon David Montgomery, has failed to materialise.

RedBird IMI paid £600m in 2023 to acquire a call option that was intended to convert into ownership of the Telegraph newspapers and The Spectator magazine.

That objective was thwarted by a change in media ownership laws – which banned any form of foreign state ownership – amid an outcry from parliamentarians.

The Spectator was then sold last year for £100m to Sir Paul Marshall, the hedge fund billionaire, who has installed Lord Gove, the former cabinet minister, as its editor.

The UAE-based IMI, which is controlled by the UAE’s deputy prime minister and ultimate owner of Manchester City Football Club, Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, extended a further £600m to the Barclays to pay off a loan owed to Lloyds Banking Group, with the balance secured against other family-controlled assets.

Other bidders for the Telegraph had included Lord Saatchi, the former advertising mogul, who offered £350m, while Lord Rothermere, the Daily Mail proprietor, pulled out of the bidding for control of his rival’s titles last summer amid concerns that he would be blocked on competition grounds.

The Telegraph’s ownership had been left in limbo by a decision taken by Lloyds Banking Group, the principal lender to the Barclay family, to force some of the newspapers’ related corporate entities into a form of insolvency proceedings.

DMGT, RedBird and IMI all declined to comment.