Up to 40% of shops must be repurposed in next five years, UK local leaders claim

A closed shop. The Revo chief executive said that if towns don’t transform then some will ‘wither on the vine’. Photograph: Antonio Olmos/The Observer

Up to 40% of shops will need to be reinvented into anything from go-kart tracks to food markets over the next five years or “wither on the vine” as demand for physical retail wanes, local leaders have claimed.

The need to repurpose retail space was named as the biggest concern for local authorities, landlords, developers and other town centre management professionals as part of a survey by their trade body Revo and the consultancy Lambert Smith Hampton (LSH).