Is retail still alive where you live?

I'm only 8 miles from Ipswich but never go 🛒 ng there. Cambridge and Norwich have much better options.

For clothes and a general mooch around, Woodbridge has almost everything I need. Plus some very good cafes!

Ha, no. Town is full of Greek barbers, vape shops and phone shops, and lots of empty units.
Our local council put out an appeal for volunteers to come forward and tidy up the centre... stuff like picking up litter, weeding, and cleaning graffiti.
Fair play to them, but they spent hours cleaning the graffiti off of one building and it was covered in tags again the next day. Must be so disheartening.

I live in a suburb of Manchester and both city centre and local retail seems to be thriving. Hospitality less so, frequent closures of venues that are seemingly popular and have been around for years. That said, very few empty units in the local area, and as soon as one closes, another opens.

My local neighbour in London is doing well for retail - got an independent deli, florist, hardware store, Turkish supermarket and vintage/second hand furniture/homeware store in our local run of shops. A few dodgy vape shops in the wider area but not much.

I do think overall there is simply too much retail space still though. London councils have usually been fairly pragmatic about having it change - there used to be a three more shops on our local street but one became an office for an architect/building firm and the other two are now residential instead which is better than having empty shops or more dodgy shops

Not in the smallish town i live in. It is pretty grim now. The more shops that close here are getting replaced with fast food places (we currently have 5 burger/pizza takeaways next door to eachother and a million others dotted around even at the end of housing streets). Plus the only local place to shop for clothes and groceries now is Asda. We are simply another place now overrun with vape shops, Turkish barbers & takeaways that the council keep approving despite people opposing more opening up.

It's quite sad really looking at the state of it, compared to other local towns and the nearest city centre.

Yes most definitely. Nearest city York.

Certainly not in Ipswich. The town centre is an absolute shit hole now and gets worse every day.

Bury St. Edmunds is still lovely so retail is possible but there's no way back now for Ipswich town centre.

Not really I live in a city Ne Scotland and just like swathes of the UK good retailers getting less and less.
However if you need a haircut,nails done,or phone unlocked while choosing a vape
You're well catered for.