More of Scotland's high streets are failing

Some 48 per cent of Scottish town and city centres have "failing" high streets compared to 23 per cent across the UK, research by property agency Colliers International has found.

The retail offering of a further 4 per cent of Scots towns are "degenerating" as retailers either collapse into recession or consolidate into the handful of towns and cities that are thriving.

Colliers said failing areas showed "poor historical performance" in terms of the rent landlords can charge occupiers and where "future performance is also forecast to be weak".

The research also took into consideration employment and population factors. Colliers rated 364 UK towns and cities.

Only 20 per cent of town centres north of the Border were considered to be "thriving" compared to more than one in four in the UK. Nor were there any Scottish high streets considered by the research to be "improving".

The firm did not reveal which Scottish towns were classed as failures, although some examples in England include Bootle, Dunstable, Walsall, Ramsgate and North Shields.

Colliers said that retail rents have remained relatively stagnant over the past six years within Scotland with few exceptions such as George Street in Edinburgh where rents have increased by 42 per cent over that period.

Mark Charlton, head of research for Colliers, said: "These towns have lost a sense of purpose. Failing and declining high streets have lost several retailers that have gone into administration, or have lost them to out-of-town retail parks or other regional centres. This is not just because of recession, it is a structural change. These are not going to be replaced."

The report also warned that banks were set to "pull the plug" on heavily indebted property owners and force more "consensual" sales of property, particularly in "secondary" locations where rents were poor.