Leadership1 publisher3 min readPublished
Britain's mid-sized malls chart different futures, from housing to leisure to thriving as-is
Bletchley's Brunel Centre faces demolition next year for flats and a health centre, as Savills finds mid-sized malls draw under 18% of mall spending. Owners and councils are now deciding which homes, clinics, labs or community uses fill these sites, and how much room is left for shops.
The Board Room · Leadership desk
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What happened
- CBRE put the vacancy rate across UK shopping centres at 16% in the second quarter, and found it significantly lower at the major centres.
- Savills found that almost 73% of shopping-centre spending between April and June 2026 went to the biggest sites.
- Cambridge's Grafton Centre, with shuttered units and an empty former Debenhams, has long-term plans that pair retail with a life science centre.
- In Norwich, the Anglia Square development is set to be replaced mainly by housing.
- At Weston Favell in Northampton, footfall has risen every year since the pandemic, according to centre manager Kevin Legg.
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Why it matters
- constraint Most towns cannot copy the life-science plan for Cambridge's Grafton Centre, so their owners are left choosing among housing, health, leisure and community uses.
- decision Councils backing demolition are rebuilding demand before shops: the retail kept on the Brunel site depends on residents who arrive only after the flats are built.
- contradiction A centre owner says many mid-sized malls have no future while Weston Favell's manager calls his centre relevant, so whether a secondary site comes down turns on its owner and its tenant mix.
Spending has already split the sector into two tiers. On Savills' spring-quarter figures, the biggest centres took roughly four times the share of shopping-centre spending that medium-sized ones did [29]. Kardi Somerfield, a marketing lecturer at the University of Northampton, said some destination centres are running at "almost 100% occupancy" [23]. "It is not just that shopping centres have one destiny; they really don't," she said [22].
Some owners in the lower tier say so themselves. "There are too many in the UK and many don't have a future," said Subjit Jassy, a director at Pioneer Group, which owns the Grafton Centre in Cambridge [17]. He said: "The old model of retailers expanding to improve turnover has now disappeared because of the internet." [18]
Bletchley shows where that leaves a 1970s centre. The Brunel opened in 1973, when centre:MK, a large destination centre four miles away in Milton Keynes, did not yet exist [8][9]. Its one remaining shop, a Boots Opticians, is set to close later this month [10]. Keith Ely, an 87-year-old town councillor who remembers the opening, is not upset to see it go [12]. "It is a sad old building, isn't it?" he said [13]. "There is no nostalgia from me." [14]
The council presents the demolition as a housing decision. "We do need shops," said Ed Hume, Labour's housing lead at Milton Keynes City Council [1]. "The change here is about making sure we have a town centre that is much more open." [2] The trade-off is explicit: the council gives up a building designed for retail in exchange for homes, and keeps only some shop space on the site [11]. Whether new residents fill the shops that remain cannot be tested until the flats are occupied, and demolition is not due until next year [10].
Northampton offers two other routes. Market Walk is to become a leisure and entertainment space [25]. Weston Favell, another centre that opened in the 1970s, has kept a large supermarket, national brands and independent shops alongside community facilities, including a library and a church [7]. Kevin Legg, the centre manager, said: "Other shopping centres are trying to emulate and create what we've got." [6]
Silhouette Youth Theatre, a charity now using the church, plans a 250-seat theatre in part of a former Wilko store next year [26]. George Grande, its voice lead, said the location lets more people arrive by public transport and gives the group visibility [27]. "That is how we can get other people to join us," he said [28].
The evidence supports the housing-first account for centres that have already emptied, such as the Brunel [10][11]. It does not support it for every secondary site. At Weston Favell, shops are still the core of the building [7]. In my view, the decision a council takes this year is which of those two paths a site follows. Approving a demolition now removes the Weston Favell option for that site. The homes-first plan is tested only once the new residents move in.
What to watch
- Whether the Grafton Centre's life-science scheme moves from a long-term plan to a firm proposal, and how much retail space it keeps.
- How many of the shop units kept on the Brunel site are let once the flats are occupied, the first test of the homes-first approach.
- The next CBRE and Savills readings, to see whether secondary centres' share of spending moves away from the under-18% recorded for April to June 2026.