Network Rail retail performance set to boost Birmingham Gateway

WITH the traditional retail sector being squeezed as discretionary spending dries up, Network Rail is continuing to buck the high street.

The organisation, which operates some of Britain’s biggest and busiest railway stations – including Birmingham New Street – said like-for-like sales at its concourses had outperformed the high street in the last 10 consecutive quarters.

The figures will be a boon to the company as it looks to try and attract retailers to the £600m Birmingham Gateway scheme.

The development has been overshadowed by the multi-million pound John Lewis department store but the New Street concourse will also include 16 new retail units.

Network Rail’s latest station retail results show a 2.54% growth in like-for-like sales between Q3 (October 1 – December 31) 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, the 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.”

The top performing stations included 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 in Q2.

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.”

All profit from Network Rail’s retail activity is re-invested in the railway, helping to improve infrastructure.