Big retailers are returning to the high street, but local opinion is divided

AS THE well-heeled residents of Edinburgh's Stockbridge neighbourhood filed up the hill during their daily walk to work on Wednesday morning, there would have been mixed feelings towards the latest addition to their familiar high street.

A Sainsbury's Local was celebrating its arrival in Deanhaugh Street. But for some 4,000 inhabitants of this middle class, faintly bohemian community, it was a moment they had hoped would never come. The store's launch marked the end of more than a year of campaigning to keep Stockbridge's high street free of another big retail chain.

The area's traditional butchers, fishmongers and delicatessen – many of whom have been trading in Stockbridge for decades – are held in such affection that a campaign to keep Sainsbury's off the high street attracted support from the likes of business secretary Vince Cable and the food writer Joanna Blythman.

Although campaigners won an initial victory when Sainsbury's lost out to Scotmid for a site further down the street previously occupied by the now defunct Woolworths chain, it wasn't long before they were forced to give up the fight when the supermarket giant made a move on another plot which lay vacant after First Quench, the off-licence specialist, fell into administration.

Although Sainsbury's points out that the new shop will create 25 jobs, for many local residents and shopowners it's a triumph for big business over a small community that prides itself on its traditional, independent shops.

There have been calls to boycott the store, but whether the residents of Stockbridge choose to shop there or not, the return of big brands to Britain's high streets is a trend all towns and cities will have to get used to, according to retail analysts.

The oft-vaunted images of tumbleweeds blowing around deserted town centres may soon be a thing of the past as some of the country's largest retailers eye a return to the high streets they once deserted in favour of American-style out-of-town shopping centres.

According to the midsummer retail report from Colliers International, which is published this week, firms such as Sainsbury's are continuing their push on smaller town and city centre stores. Although the likes of Tesco Express have been around for several years, the popularity of these smaller community supermarkets with shoppers has prompted a string of other non-food retailers to jump on the bandwagon. B&Q last week became the latest firm to unveil plans to open a series of town centre stores after years of concentrating on out-of-town retail parks. The chain's parent company, Kingfisher, is intending to open 60 smaller sites in the heart of Britain's towns and cities following successful trials in France and Russia.

Ian Cheshire, chief executive of Kingfisher, said: "There are 60 catchment (areas] where there isn't a B&Q within a 20-minute drive-time, where you have got more than 40,000 people."

B&Q's announcement follows hot on the heels of a similar revelation by Halfords, which is going back to its roots by opening 80 high street shops. Halfords Cycle Company Ltd began life in 1892 as a single store in Birmingham but it was a keen participant in the explosion of out-of-town retail parks in the 1980s and 1990s after opening its first out-of-town superstore in Croydon in 1984. Although the firm said it would continue to open larger sites in retail parks, it is keen to take advantage of the high street's higher footfall.

As the likes of Tesco Express and Sainsbury's Local have discovered, shoppers will dip in and out of conveniently placed smaller stores – for example on their way to and from work. Although they may not do their main shop at these outlets, retail experts say large chains are increasingly cottoning on to the fact there is money to be made from shoppers who buy fewer items but on a regular basis.

According to Tom Johnston, head of retail at Colliers International, the moves by B&Q and Halfords are not anomalies but part of a growing trend which could herald the renaissance of the great British high street.

"There is a trend and a need to regenerate town and city centre high streets," he said.

In Scotland's case the trend is particularly welcome. Prior to the sub-prime crisis, the Association of Town Centre Management warned that Scotland was in danger of turning into a nation of ghost towns, as only 10 per cent of new shops and shopping centres due to be built between 2007 and 2011 were in town centres. Although the recession and a collapse in the commercial property market put paid to many major developments, Scotland, like the rest of Britain, seemed set on the path of America, where shoppers drive to vast out-of-town centres.

While the recession also caused an explosion in boarded-up shop fronts as decades-old high street names such as Woolworths were consigned to the history books, it also forced a change in attitudes that could trigger a revival in town centre shopping, according to Leigh Sparks, professor of retail studies at Stirling University.

As more and more empty sites flooded the market during the recession, landlords of high street properties were forced to become more flexible – and not only with rental prices. They also became more willing to adapt sites to suit retailers' needs, Sparks says. The high prices and inflexible demands of high street landlords were among the drivers behind the push towards out-of-town parks over the past 30 years.

"With the recession and the changes that have gone on, there is more property available but also more willing (from landlords] to reconfigure that property in a way that suits retailers," Sparks says. "Whether this trend is a true renaissance of the high street only time will tell – but certainly it's happening."

Sparks is confident that trials from the likes of B&Q and Halfords are likely to prove successful. With households continuing to cut down on non-essential spending, and high fuel prices causing people to think twice about using their cars, shoppers are more willing to pop into a local store for one or two essential items, he says. However, Sparks does not believe the move towards compact high street outlets will necessarily spell the death of the out-of-town retail park, and families in particular will continue to drive to superstores for their weekly shop.

"It might not be that people do either or," he says. "Retailers (such as Sainsbury's, Tesco, B&Q] will capture that top-up market on the high street but also that big spend (out of town]."

Malcolm Pinkerton, senior analyst at Verdict Research, agrees that this latest trend won't end Britain's love affair with the out-of-town shopping centre. It's merely an attempt by large chains to capture both markets. "It's covering all the bases and providing more opportunities to get customers through the door."

Pinkerton also points out that modern retail parks such as Silverburn near Glasgow and London's Westfield shopping centre have evolved substantially since the first models in the early Eighties, which were dominated by "big ticket" retailers such as DIY and electrical stores.

"Out-of-town centres have changed a lot in the past ten years," Pinkerton argues. "They are real destination places in their own right – they have restaurants, cinemas."

But the evolution of retail parks has also gone hand-in-hand with the acceleration of rental prices at out-of-town sites, says Pinkerton. This will encourage more firms to go down the route of Sainsbury's and B&Q and make a return to the high street in select locations.

"In a market that is slowing you have to open up more space to maintain or take space from your rivals," he says. "Big out-of-town shops are great but they are expensive. In town centres you have the high footfall – it's just appealing to that convenience."

But while most Britons would rather see a big chain move into an area than boarded-up shops, the return to the high street of firms such as B&Q and Tesco will spark more rows over homogeneity – such as the one in Stockbridge, says Chris Dougray, a director at DTZ in Scotland.

"The impact of the small format stores on the local high street stirs much debate – does it reduce trade to other retailers? Or does it in fact stimulate more footfall in the immediate area, consequently improving other stores' performance? This is a debate which is unlikely to stop any time soon."