Barnsley Town Centre - Retail Health Check

 

About the brand

Barnsley is a market town in South Yorkshire with a rich industrial heritage, which has recently undergone significant regeneration to improve the town centre, aiming to create a lively, relevant retail and social hub

Construction of The Glass Works has been the most significant retail development. This has created an attractive retail core, involving a diverse mix of national and independent retail and F&B providers, and a leisure hub including a 13-screen Cineworld and bowling offer

BMBC wished to understand the performance of the town centre, and ensure strategies were implemented to maximise the relevance of the wider town centre across a range of use types

The Challenge/Task

Following on from the opening of The Glass Works, BMBC were looking to understand the health of the town centre’s offer, assessing consumer demand and the degree to which supply is relevant and right-sized. They required an assessment of current trading performance, strengths and weaknesses and opportunities, both to draw additional visitors to the town centre and to best utilise existing space within the town centre.

WHAT WE DID

Pragma worked closely with BMBC on the following workstreams:

  • Reviewed town centre’s usage patterns over the last 36 months, utilising mobile phone data, to provide an updated view of Barnsley’s catchment, penetration, leakage to locations outside Barnsley, visitor profile and visitor behaviour, by zone

  • Identified and quantified the unique user groups available to Barnsley town centre and highlighted the relative value of each, to ascertain those with greatest potential to increase usage of and visits to the town centre. Pragma also identified how interventions could drive increased relevance of the town centre to these groups

  • Estimated sales performance of Barnsley town centre’s occupiers, based on a review of catchment extent, market size, visitor profile and behaviour, and sales data from comparable locations

  • Reviewed sales performance in light of visitor spend potential to determine achieved market share, then benchmarked against comparable locations to determine strengths and quantify opportunities for improved performance

  • Developed recommendations on upsizes, relocations, occupier additions, and new initiatives that would drive visits to the town centre, improve sales performance, and increase Barnsley town centre’s relevance to target groups

The Result

The insight and output from the final report has provided a robust foundation to support BMBC in the optimising the commercial mix in the town centre to help identify strategies to repurpose areas of the town centre where a retail-led solution may not be optimal.