AROUND 61 high street shops closed for good on every day of 2019 – capping a decade which saw a host of retailers disappear.

The Centre for Retail Research says there were 16,073 store closures last year, of which 5,901 were large chains.

Debenhams, House of Fraser, Bon Marche, Mothercare, Clintons, Select Fashion, Karen Millen and Coast, Jack Wills and Bathstore all went into administration.

Professor Joshua Bamfield, director at the Centre for Retail Research, expects closures to rise by another nine per cent in 2020.

He said: “The pressures of higher labour costs, business rates and relatively weak demand will continue to undercut profits and force the weakest to close stores or enter administration

.”

The closures cap a grim decade for bricks and mortar retailers.

  • DVD rental chain Blockbuster collapsed in 2013. It had shops in Weymouth and Bridport.
  • Shoe chain Barratts, which had a shop in Weymouth, collapsed in 2013.
  • Phones4U closed all its stores in 2014. It had branches in Weymouth and Dorchester.
  • Staples, which had stores in Weymouth and Dorchester, disappeared as a physical store in 2016. The nshops became branches of Office Outlet, which itself went into administration.
  • Bonmarche, with a branch in Weymouth, fell into administration last year, with Peacocks emerging as the preferred bidder to buy it.

The demise of BHS in 2016 was the biggest retail casualty since the collapse of Woolworths in 2008