Tuesday 12 Feb 2013
Rail station retailers outperform high street for tenth quarter in a row
- Region & Route:
- National
Retailers at some of Britain’s biggest and busiest railway stations have seen like-for-like sales outperform the high street for the tenth consecutive quarter, new figures released by Network Rail show.
The latest station retail results show a 2.54% growth in like-for-like sales between Q3 (1 October-31 December) 2011 and Q3 2012. Over the same period, the British Retail Consortium reported sales on the high street grew by just 0.2%.
Figures were compiled from the results of retailers operating over 500,000 sq ft of retail space totalling over 500 units at 16 of Britain’s biggest and busiest stations owned and operated by Network Rail. In total, these stations benefit from a combined annual footfall of over a billion.
Jonathan Crick, commercial director of retail at Network Rail, said: “With growth on the high street remaining flat, our station retail sales continue grow. This strong performance is impressive taking into account the challenging economic climate we face, and is thanks to investment in rail and growth in passenger numbers. The guaranteed high levels of footfall in our stations provide our retail partners with some of the most lucrative trading environments available in the marketplace today.
Top performing stations include London Bridge (+23.27%), followed by London Victoria (+7.32%) and Euston (+5.82%), compared to the same period last year.
Food and beverage offers continued to perform strongly in stations. Top performing categories were specialist food (+11.27), bread (+9.64%) and pubs & bars (+5.93%). Cards & stationery also performed well (+5.69%).
This current set of figures shows growth has increased slightly on the 2.37% increase reported last period (July to September 2012). In the same period high street sales, as reported by the BRC, reported growth of just 0.5%.
Not included in the like-for-like stats is King’s Cross, which has seen a huge increase in retail sales following the opening of the spectacular new western concourse in March 2012. During the third quarter, station retailers generated over £10m in sales, which represents a 137% increase on the same period the previous year when the number of retail units in the old southern concourse was significantly lower.
David Biggs, director of property at Network Rail, added: “These are great results for our retailers, and we are delighted with the recent survey findings from Passenger Focus which show passenger satisfaction has soared particularly at King’s Cross and Waterloo, where we have made significant investment in providing a better environment and improved retail facilities for passengers.”
All profit from Network Rail’s retail activity is re-invested in the railway, helping deliver a better value railway for taxpayers and passengers.
Notes to editors
Network Rail owns and manages 16 of Britain’s biggest and busiest stations:
National stations
- Birmingham New Street
- Edinburgh Waverley
- Glasgow Central
- Leeds
- Liverpool Lime Street
- Manchester Piccadilly
London stations
- Cannon Street
- Charing Cross
- Euston
- Fenchurch Street
- King’s Cross
- Liverpool Street
- London Bridge
- Paddington
- Victoria
- Waterloo
- (St Pancras International managed by Network Rail on behalf of HS1)
About Network Rail:
- Is the 'not for dividend' owner and operator of Britain's railway infrastructure, which includes the tracks, signals, tunnels, bridges, viaducts, level crossings and stations - the largest of which we also manage We aim to provide a safe, reliable and efficient rail infrastructure for freight and passenger trains to use.
- Is one of the largest land and property owners in the country; commercial activities are core to the operation and development of our overall business. Over a five-year period until 2014, all property activities including retail, business space and commercial developments, are forecast to generate £1.3bn – all of which will be reinvested straight back into the railways for the benefit of passengers.
- Has over 500,000 sq ft of high footfall retail space at its 16 managed stations, many of which are amongst the largest stations in Britain. Like-for-like retail sales results at these stations have outperformed the high street for the last ten successive quarters.
- Is also the country’s largest provider of commercial property to small and medium sized businesses with a diverse portfolio of over 7,400 properties nationwide. The business space estate has occupancy rates of 95%.
- Works in partnership to promote regeneration around our stations and improve the journey experience by leveraging investment from the public and private sectors. Development projects include multi-million pound commercial schemes above our stations at London Bridge (The Shard) and Solum Regeneration, a multi-site joint venture with Kier Property.
- Passenger Focus, the independent consumer organisation representing the interests of train, bus, coach and tram users, has reported the highest-ever level of customer satisfaction across the network in its latest survey.
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About Network Rail
We own, operate and develop Britain's railway infrastructure; that's 20,000 miles of track, 30,000 bridges, tunnels and viaducts and the thousands of signals, level crossings and stations. We run 20 of the UK's largest stations while all the others, over 2,500, are run by the country's train operating companies.
Usually, there are almost five million journeys made in the UK and over 600 freight trains run on the network. People depend on Britain's railway for their daily commute, to visit friends and loved ones and to get them home safe every day. Our role is to deliver a safe and reliable railway, so we carefully manage and deliver thousands of projects every year that form part of the multi-billion pound Railway Upgrade Plan, to grow and expand the nation's railway network to respond to the tremendous growth and demand the railway has experienced - a doubling of passenger journeys over the past 20 years.
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