The Vitality Rankings are created by Newmark’s Consultancy & Analytics team each year, using metrics that reflect the drivers of retail health at that time. During the pandemic’s lockdowns, these factors included very specific types of occupier that were able to trade (such as grocers, pharmacies and takeaways), vaccination rates, residents’ age, and Google’s mobility data that was monitoring consumer movement in residential, commercial and park areas.
However the data points used to demonstrate retail vitality in 2024 are the traditional drivers that would normally be expected, such as market size, quality of retail offer and vacancy rate. This is due to consumers across the UK returning to their pre-COVID behaviours in 2024, with lockdowns thankfully now a distant memory.
There are some residual impacts that affect retail centres, with ecommerce levels higher than in 2019, and working from home more common amongst white collar workers. The former especially means that there is now an over-supply of retail space across the UK, leading to increased vacancy rates and unproductive space. We have therefore used the amount of floorspace under redevelopment as an additional positive factor, to show locations that are taking proactive steps to improve or reduce the building stock.
