According to this month’s Chamber on-line newsletter, Professor Leigh Sparks of the Institute for Retail Studies, based at the University of Stirling, has been asked to review the report produced by Experian Property Consultancy in June on behalf of the Economic Development Committee.
The Chamber will be publishing the findings and holding a breakfast briefing on 10 October for interested parties.
The 171-page report, made public in August, concluded broadly that there was strong consumer need for a ‘bare minimum’ of 100,000 square feet of new retail floorspace immediately, with the current space insufficient to cope with Island consumers’ level of expenditure and ‘failing to capitalise on its full potential’.
It claimed that the need was most acute in convenience goods, such as food and other consumables, as well as in clothes and electrical goods, particularly bulky goods like furniture and DIY.
