This year’s Empty Shops Survey has been jointly carried out by Kim Leonard, Inge-Lise Greaves and Anna Gunn . This has been an exercise carried out by the Civic Society over many years and is a good barometer to test the health of our main retail streets by identifying the number of empty units. Kim’s report is below.
We have taken the opportunity of reviewing the information we collate about the individual retail units and for the first time we have engaged a much more detailed approach to identify the main activity of the businesses that make up our ‘High Street’. The term ‘High Street’ has become a nebulous term and has come to mean the main shopping area of a town. In the case of King’s Lynn, this encompasses ten thoroughfares as detailed further below. This detail is important, as whilst the trend in ‘empty shops’ is useful, the overall economic health of a town can be reflected in the type and proliferation of the main business of the shops that are attracted here and that remain viable.
The first detailed survey was conducted in April 2025 and there is another detailed survey at the beginning of October 2025. This has allowed at least some comparison over seven months, rather than the traditional annual analysis in past years. Future years will benefit from this additional detailed work.
There are local and national factors that impact on the vitality or otherwise of our High Street and hopefully some of these will be brought out in this report. In fear of a report that lasts 50 pages, I may not have explored some of the factors that impact the High Street in depth and I will leave those for members to identify and consider for yourselves.
Detailed Analysis and Diversity of Businesses
Click to see Appendix A and Appendix B which give a detailed breakdown of the type of businesses and the number of units in each street broken down into activity for April 20025 and Appendix C and Appendix D for October 2025.
Whatever we may say about the health of our High Street, it was surprising to note that when the ‘Hospitality’, ‘Hair and Beauty’ and ‘Financial’ headlines are broken down further, there were an amazing 75 different types of business activity represented in King’s Lynn. ‘Health and Beauty’ units, which includes hairdressers, barbers and nail salons, are the most prolific but is explainable as, so I am told by someone who regularly uses these services, hair needs to be cut and styled and nails cut, polished and painted on a very regular basis! Another explanation for this high incidence may be due to the proximity of the College of West Anglia which regularly produces qualified health and beauty technicians. There may not be enough permanent jobs in the town for these graduates and therefore another (or perhaps the only) option seems to be to start your own business, some at home, some mobile but certainly some in shops in town and should be applauded. The activity appears to cluster in the roads where rents are perhaps more affordable. Whether there are too many of this type of business activity or not will be determined by pure supply and demand.
An urban myth has developed that High Streets are now only made up of charity, vape, tattoo and barber shops. Whilst this may be true elsewhere, it is not necessarily the case in Lynn where these units combined make up only 9% of the total. We currently have 14 charity shops and even these are not safe from wider economic pressures, with one charity shop in Broad Street changing hands this year. In addition, Cancer Research UK are actively looking at closing High Street shops all over the country and opening out-of-town ‘super-warehouses’ due to increased staff costs, competition from online sites such as Vinted, and falling footfall in town centres.
Empty Shops
As in previous years, our survey covered the main shopping streets as detailed in the following table. The number of empty units is given for both April and October 2025.
| Street | Total number of units | Number of empty units April 2025 | % of total | Number of empty units October 2025 | % of total |
| High Street | 87 | 11 | 12.64 | 12 | 13.79 |
| Norfolk Street | 81 | 11 | 13.58 | 7 | 8.64 |
| Broad Street & St Dominic’s Square | 48 | 6 | 12.50 | 5 | 10.42 |
| New Conduit Street & Purfleet Street | 37 | 4 | 10.81 | 4 | 10.81 |
| Tower Street | 28 | 4 | 14.29 | 3 | 10.71 |
| Blackfriars Street | 15 | 3 | 20 | 3 | 20.00 |
| St James Street | 36 | 8 | 22.22 | 8 | 22.22 |
| Saturday Market Place | 9 | 2 | 22.22 | 1 | 11.11 |
| TOTAL | 341 | 49 | 100 | 43 | 100 |
As can be seen, there were a total of 49 empty units in April 2025 which reduced to 43 in October 2025, an improvement despite all the challenges facing the High Street, of which we will explore later.
The table below records the results since 2018.
| Date of survey | High Street | Norfolk Street | Broad Street / St Dominic’s Square | New Conduit Street / Purfleet Street | Tower Street / Blackfriars Street | St James Street / Saturday Market Place | Total |
| August 2018 | 9 | 9 | 8 | 4 | 4 | 10 | 44 |
| February 2019 | 12 | 12 | 9 | 2 | 1 | 8 | 44 |
| September 2019 | 12 | 12 | 12 | 1 | 1 | 5 | 43 |
| October 2020 | 8 | 5 | 13 | 3 | 2 | 6 | 37 |
| April 2021 | 12 | 8 | 16 | 4 | 1 | 8 | 49 |
| April 2022 | 15 | 8 | 7 | 4 | 2 | 8 | 44 |
| September 2023 | 8 | 8 | 6 | 3 | 4 | 7 | 36 |
| August 2024 | 10 | 13 | 4 | 5 | 4 | 9 | 45 |
| April 2025 | 11 | 11 | 6 | 4 | 7 | 10 | 49 |
| October 2025 | 12 | 7 | 5 | 4 | 6 | 9 | 43 |
Whilst having one in 12 units or 12.6% empty is never anything to write home about, the current position is better than six months ago and no worse, and in fact is exactly the same, as the average position over the past nine years. Again, whilst we would all like to have all shops occupied and a thriving, vibrant town centre which supplied everything we could possibly want, this is difficult to foresee ever happening unless there are some seismic local and national changes and a complete reversal in our current buying habits. However, trying to put a positive spin on what is possibly a gloomy outlook, as a town we compare marginally favourably with the rest of the UK as the national average empty shop figure is 13.8%. We are a lot more fortunate than some towns in the country, which have up to one in five shops vacant.
The table below shows the empty shops statistics for a number of local and other towns and like King’s Lynn Town Football Club, we hover around mid-table.
| Town | % of Empty Shops |
| Southend | 15.4 |
| Ipswich | 14.2 |
| Northampton | 14.0 |
| National Average | 13.8 |
| King’s Lynn | 12.6 |
| Chatham | 12.0 |
| Norwich | 11.8 |
| Peterborough | 10.8 |
| Cambridge | 8.5 |
| Bury St Edmunds | 6.0 |
Local Challenges
Having just spent time comparing King’s Lynn with other towns, it is accepted that direct comparison is difficult. Each town has its own distinct benefits and challenges: its catchment area, the demography and spending power of its residents; transport links; ability to attract outside visitors, etc. We will never be a Bray High Street in Berkshire, which has a higher per capita of millionaires than anywhere else in the UK, for example.
Local challenges stem from the lack of footfall in the town centre. Our out-of-town retail parks have large national stores, where customers don’t have to pay for parking or battle the traffic into the town centre. Paying for parking is a real disincentive and it is highly unlikely that the Council will offer free parking to improve the situation as this is such a big cash-cow earner. Perhaps offering free parking for certain days leading up to Christmas might just provide a welcome although a very temporary boost.
Dead End of the High Street
As highlighted in a recent Lynn News special report (see edition dated Friday 5 September 2025) entitled ‘Dead End of the High Street’, there are areas in town where the number of existing empty shops gives a run-down, dilapidated feel. This is well illustrated by the closure of Debenhams in 2020, known as ‘an anchor store’ which while it was open attracted other businesses to the area. Conversely now that it has been shut and neglected, it is turning the area in a no-go area for potential businesses. This is despite the attractiveness and efforts of the shops and businesses that remain there.
It is said that efforts are being made to find a solution to the eyesore that has become the Debenham’s building as it takes up so much of the street. Converting into (or better still) knocking it down to build an hotel has been mooted as a potential use. This could be especially useful as when the St George’s Guildhall development is complete and the expectation of thousands of visitors start arriving from all over the world, they do not currently have many places to stay.
To attract income to the town for day visitors is one thing, but the big prize is for visitors to stay overnight or over the weekend, injecting more income into the local economy. To enable longer stays, we need more hotel beds. The Somerfeld and Thomas Hotel, perhaps?
There is a danger that other areas of town are already in the same boat or heading the way of the Saturday Market Place end of the High Street. Blackfriars Street with the ongoing debacle of the unoccupied old Post Office and St James Street are good examples.
Many of King’s Lynn’s shop premises are owned by absent and even landlords based overseas. The Government announced the introduction of new powers to revitalise High Streets by introducing High Street Rental Auctions. (As an aside it would certainly improve our Carbon Emissions if politicians stopped just talking but started actually doing something!) This initiative enables local councils to take ownership of long-term empty shop premises and make them available to local businesses and that would certainly help. This option was mentioned as a possibility in the Lynn News article. Whether it will be enforced or not is a different matter. We will see where we are next year.
When Alfred Jermyn opened Lynn’s first department store in 1872, I wonder how many local shops which sold the goods he now sold closed down? Empty shops as a consequence of changing retail practices and advances has therefore been going on for a long time and is not a new phenomenon. Jermyn’s and Sons were acquired by Debenham’s in 1943.
Pop-Up Shops
We have a total of five ‘pop-up, prefab’ shops in Lynn, including the two situated in Purfleet Street. Last year, those of you with good memories might recall I commented about the installation of these ‘pop-up, prefab’ shops. Three of these shops remain vacant including the two in Purfleet Street which appear to have only been occupied for a short period of time over the past year. I questioned last year why we had invested so much in creating additional retail space when there is suitable space available in any street in the Town Centre, whilst destroying the view of the Custom House from the High Street at the same time.
The two Purfleet Street pop-up shops were empty at the time of the October 2025 survey and there appears to have been little occupancy during the period leading up to Christmas 2024 and the whole of 2025. These now look like rusted and abandoned site huts from exhausted mine workings, waiting for a bulldozer and appear to have been a waste of our Council Tax payer’s money. I have put in a Freedom of Information Act request as it would be very interesting to see how much these units cost to purchase, instal and maintain against occupancy rates and rental income. I will let members know the results in the next Newsletter and on our website.
Wider Challenges
As identified in previous reports, the wider challenges facing the High Street are not new. Buying online will continue to grow. I am guilty, if guilt needs to be confessed, of buying online. One would go to the Amazon website on your mobile phone; choose what you want from the seemingly infinite choice; pay instantly and it arrives the next day at a far cheaper price. The alternative would be to get in my car or on my bike, pay for parking and hope that the shop has what you want. In our busy lives, minutes compared to hours without any inconvenience really matter. We have all become lazy shoppers. However, you cannot replace the benefits of the exercise, the social interaction and the chance to bump into someone you know when you shop in town. Although for me, sitting outside TK Maxx (other shoe shops are available) for an hour while my wife chooses yet another pair of shoes, you can see why Amazon has its benefits!
Increases in Employer National Insurance rates and reductions in the qualifying threshold along with Minimum Wage increases in the last Budget, have had a significant detrimental impact on all small businesses. And more pain is no doubt yet to come. A report by Begbies Traynor (the corporate insolvency and recovery group) estimates that up to 50,000 British businesses are on the brink of going bust with retail and the hospitality sectors bearing the brunt, with the worrying potential that 17,000 shops could close. Good news for the Begbies Traynor share price, but ominous news for those who own or work in a small business.
Along with the closure of the shop and yet another empty unit comes the loss of the local spending power of the employees who have lost their jobs. Household incomes are also under pressure from food inflation and some of the highest energy costs in Europe which reduces our catchment area’s spending power and must be having an impact on the number of visits to town.
The Government and Opposition both announced policies to help the High Street at their recent conferences. The Shadow Chancellor said they would introduce a policy to abolish Business Rates for High Street shops where many retail outlets are already exempt and which in any event would cause a gaping £4 billion hole in local Council incomes, which would need to be replaced from elsewhere.
The Government’s Communities Secretary of State announced ahead of Labour Conference that they will introduce new powers to give local authorities more control over how many vape shops, bookmakers, and barbershops can open in a local area. As King’s Lynn has only a total of 15 such outlets out of 341 shops, this smacks of nanny state interference and deciding how many ice cubes you should have in your gin and tonic whilst sitting on the deck of the Titanic. It will be of no use to King’s Lynn and more hot air.
A recent blog entitled ‘Will the Conservatives or Labour save the high street?’ by Anthony Breach for the Centre for Cities website (www.centreforcities.org) and published on 8 October 2025 argued that neither policy will save the High Street. (I highly recommend this organisation if you are interested in what happens in our towns and cities.) He continues that to help our High Streets, any policy has to tackle the root causes of the problem. This lies in expanding the purchase power of the local economy by allowing local incomes to grow, with a particular focus on attracting more higher wage jobs and industries. The physical make-up of the High Street will also need to change in some places by adapting to leisure, experience, and food and drink. Conversion of empty retail to residential use as seen in Norfolk Street may also be option.
A report, also from the Centre For Cities website entitled ‘Checking out: The varying performance of high streets across the country’ published on 10 July 2025 by Paul Swinney, Oscar Selby and Luka Kovacevic identifies four key reasons why high street vacancy rates vary so much across the country and I recommend reading it for the detail that cannot be included in our newsletter. They conclude by saying that a struggling high street is the outcome of a struggling economy, not the other way round and therefore any policy interventions to save the high street shouldn’t start with the high street itself, but the wider economy. The way things are going some may be struggling for some time yet.
Reading back on my report, I hate to sound too negative as we have a lot going for us. There are parts of the town that are doing well and are very busy. We have an historic old town with a high number of unique Grade I and Grade II Listed Buildings and are surrounded by beautiful countryside. However, the stark reality is that it would seem that we might all have to accept that for all the challenges facing us, the bottom line is that there are now simply just too many shops chasing too little income. It is down to basic supply and demand that a fully occupied High Street may never be realised again and we need to forget when the High Street was the only shopping experience available.