Heart Investigates High Street shopping

Now have you done your Christmas shopping yet? If not would you rather shop online or on the High Street?

Heart has been asking our local councils how the shopping high streets are holding up compared to last year.

In Flintshire. Mold town centre has 6 empty shop units. Newcomers recently to the town centre are Country Casuals, Austin Reed and Get Connected mobile phone shop.

In Denbighshire: Rhyl has 43 empty shop units compared to 39 the previous year. In Prestatyn 10 shops are empty compared to 6 the year before.

In Conwy in 2009 16 shops opened in the area with 12 closing. In 2010 12 new stores opened with four closing.

In Cheshire: 10.8% of the Cities 700 shops are empty, which is below the national average of 14%. But within the last year retailers like John Lewis and Waitrose have announced that they are going to be coming to the city. 

In Wrexham in 2009 10.9% of shops were empty that has decreased to 8.5% in 2010. With new additions such as Hawkins Bazaar.

On the Wirral they have seen a decline in empty shops with 16% of shops in Birkenhead empty and 31% empty in New Ferry.

Head of Regeneration in Wirral David Ball has been explaining how shops can continue to compete in tough times.

He said:

"We have to try and bring shops back into economic use, if we can't do that we will look at alternative uses which could be a mix of residential and community uses or things of that nature.

"It's more convenient to get into your car and go to an out of town shopping centre so there is more competition for shops in the marketplace."