The amount of UK shopping centre space in the pipeline has dramatically decreased and could take up to five years to pick up, a CB Richard Ellis study has claimed.

The study says that the 7.9 million sq ft (733,910 sq m) of shopping centre space under construction at the moment equates to a 40 per cent drop in last year’s peak of 13 million sq ft (1.2 million sq m).

This year, 8 million sq ft (743,200 sq m) of new space was completed. Next year, this will drop to 4.7 million sq ft (436,630 sq m) at most.

CB Richard Ellis said even this figure is hopeful given the troubles in the development industry, with many completion schedules unlikely to be met. The report said: “As market conditions worsen, more and more shopping centre schemes will see completion dates rescheduled into future years.”

CB Richard Ellis director of retail research Mark Teale was pessimistic about the recovery in the shopping centre construction pipeline.

He said: “We will be going through a very thin time in new supply for retailers, especially those retailers looking for larger space. They are going to find it increasingly difficult.”

He added: “The difference this time from the early 1990s is that we were already in a consumer recession when property slowed, but this time the fall off actually started some time ago.”

Teale said retail property will take longer to bounce back than consumer spending because of the time needed to get new projects off the ground.

“New space will plod along at around 2 million sq ft a year until there is a marked upturn, but from that point it’ll take a couple of years to pick up again because of the need to reapply for planning permission and other things. We’ll be well into the consumer upturn by the time this happens,” he said.

The report states that shopping centre openings will fall back to between 2 million and 4 million sq ft (185,800 and 371,600 sq m) for some time and will not pick up until there is a wider recovery in the sector.

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