List of out-of-town shopping centres in the United Kingdom

There are only about sixteen out of town enclosed shopping centres in the UK (as opposed to open air retail parks, which do not count as shopping centres in British English, even though they do in American English). Under current policy, no more will be built. All other British shopping centres are in town and city centres.

In the 1960s and 70s, most town and city centres had seen the development of a major shopping precinct. Redditch, in Worcestershire, Kingfisher Shopping Centre. Birmingham had the Bull ring centre; Manchester, the Arndale Centre; Newcastle, the Eldon Square Shopping Centre and Leeds, the Merrion CentreThere are still few out of town major shopping centres in the UK.

Brent Cross, which opened in 1976, was the country's first out of town shopping centre.

In some cases such as Meadowhall Centre in Sheffield (opened in 1990), they were built because of available land and labour due to the demise of the steel industry in the area.

The Gateshead Metro Centre in Tyneside opened in the mid 1980s and is the largest shopping centre in the UK built on former swamp lands on the banks of the River Tyne.

The Trafford Centre in Manchester was built on the surplus land belonging to the Manchester Ship Canal.

The Merry Hill Shopping Centre in the West Midlands, which was developed during the 1980s mostly on land previously occupied by Round Oak Steelworks, is of similar concept to an out-of-town shopping centre, but is generally not considered as an out-of-town shopping centre as it is situated just a few hundred yards to the east of Brierley Hill town centre and there are actually plans for it to be integrated with the town centre in future developments.

In the case of the White Rose Centre in Leeds, it was not due to industrial downfall that it was built, but high retail space prices in the city centre and available contaminated land, close to local motorways, of the right size, and unsuitable for house building. Had the Morley sewage works not come available it is unlikely such a centre would be in Leeds.

London

South East

Greater Manchester

Yorkshire

North East

South West

West Midlands

East Midlands

Scotland

Wales

References

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