Heather Holbrook

Even a short walk up most of Scotland’s high streets will tell you a lot about the transformation they have undergone in recent years. The Covid-19 pandemic led to significant changes, particularly in terms of the way many people work and choose to interact, but it also accelerated a number of trends that were already underway.

Perhaps the best example of that is the shift to online retail. Sales made online as a percentage of the UK’s total retail sales rose from 19.1% in February 2020 to a high of 37.8% in January 2021 – while that has rebased to around 26% in 2023, the trajectory is still very much upwards.

That trend has translated into a lot of change for physical stores. The vacancy rate for UK retail properties climbed to 14.0% at the tail end of last year compared to 10.9% during 2017 – a low for the past decade. But, within that there are some interesting nuances, with retail parks seeing vacancy rates fall below the levels of 2019, while shopping centres and high streets have seen rises.

As a result, vast swathes of high street and shopping centre space have been, or are being, redeveloped for other uses. Separate figures released in 2023 by the Local Data Company (LDC) showed that 10,739 retail units were repurposed during 2022, up from 2019’s 7,307. Another survey conducted by LDC and Revo last year suggested that up to 40% of the UK’s shops will need to be repurposed.

Our built environment shouldn’t be seen as static. A property may have been developed for a particular use, but that can evolve over time as society’s needs and priorities change. For example, plans are underway to more than double the number of people living in Glasgow city centre to 40,000 by 2035, which will require a lot of the city’s retail and office buildings to be repurposed.

There are already a range of high-profile examples of planned reinventions. Part of East Kilbride Shopping Centre is going through a £62 million transformation to create hundreds of new homes. The former Marks & Spencer on Glasgow’s Sauchiehall Street will be turned into hundreds of student flats, while the redevelopment of Leith’s Ocean Terminal was given the greenlight earlier in 2024. 

The chronic lack of housing in Scotland is well known, to the point where the government declared a ‘housing emergency’ earlier this year. With net zero targets in mind, repurposing existing building stock as much as feasibly possible is one of the best ways we can meet that need – reusing a building’s foundations and structure can reduce the emissions of a project by up to 50%.

Many people will be sad to see their favourite shops go, but the sheer amount of retail space we have in city centres is going to be a thing of the past, one way or another. It is a tough, but natural, evolution of how the priorities of communities have changed – and repurposing what we already have is, in many cases, the best way of using property to fulfil them.

Heather Holbrook is partner at Thomas & Adamson, part of Egis Group