High street shop closures in Dorset and the New Forest in 2022

Changing customer habits, the aftermath of the Covid pandemic and dominance of the online giants all conspired to make life tough for bricks-and-mortar stores.

There was no national collapse on the scale that caused names such as Debenhams, Topshop and Miss Selfridge to disappear from high streets, albeit continuing online. But some of our town centres did find themselves without some of their most famous names.

The year started with a serious blow for Poole. The Marks and Spencer store which had been a fixture in the Dolphin (formerly Arndale) Centre since 1971 closed in January, despite a 3,600-signature petition to save it.

M&S said it was “rotating our store estate” in response to changing shopping habits.

In a fairly bold change of use for the site, the store is due to be replaced by an indoor adventure park and crazy golf course.

The M&S closure was followed by another big name pulling out of the town.

Waterstones announced its store in Falkland Square would shut when its lease ended at the end of February. The bookseller said it wanted to stay, but the landlord had granted a lease to the bakery Greggs, which was already a fixture on the other side of the square.

Waterstones said it was looking for another town centre site but none has been announced.

But while shopping in Poole suffered some early setbacks in 2023, it was Bournemouth that was to lose the biggest number of high street names.

Wilko announced that its store in Richmond Gardens Shopping Centre would close in February, saying it had been unable to reach an agreement with the landlord that would make the store commercially viable.

That left other tenants in the shopping centre concerned that they could lose up to half their trade.

Those same traders received the worst possible news when it was revealed that Lidl – the other big name tenant in the centre – would be closing in October.

As of October, the landlord, Evolve Estates, said it was hoping to make “exciting announcements” soon, with the centre to be turned into a “predominantly leisure-led scheme”.

But the biggest loss to Bournemouth, at least in terms of the size and history of the store, was the closure of House of Fraser in March.

The store was the oldest of the town’s big shops, tracing its history to 1871, and was the last of the town’s traditional department stores still trading.

A new use was said to be in the offing for the site and the most recent news was that the half-acre site was under offer for the second time.

Bournemouth also lost its branch of the fashion chain New Look in February, after 21 years in the town. The shop, one of the chain’s largest, had been a key part of a big redevelopment on the Bourne Avenue side of the Square at the turn of the millennium.

It was later revealed  that an Ivy restaurant was planned for the site – a fact which has only been revealed in licensing and planning applications, since the Ivy Collection chain itself has kept tight-lipped about the development.

The Ivy plan has generated enthusiasm locally about the power of such an upmarket name to drawn people into the town centre.

Another national retailer, the health food chain Holland & Barratt, closed one of its two Bournemouth stores in May, with the company saying it was looking for a bigger and better site.

Outside the big town centres, there have been closures as well.

Argos closed its store at Ringwood Road Retail Park, which had been one of the last stand-alone branches to remain open as the  brand was moved into Sainsbury’s stores.

WHSmith, meanwhile, closed its Ringwood store in December, as its lease was coming to its end.

The end of the year saw more signs of trouble among some national retailers.

The fashion chain Joules went into administration in November, raising doubts about the future of its 132 branches – which include sites in Ringwood, Lymington, Dorchester and Lyme Regis.

Another clothes retailer, M&Co, went into administration in December, shortly after closing branches in Wimborne and Dorchester. The chain still has shops in Ringwood, Christchurch, Blandford, Shaftesbury and Bridport.

If there are more retail closures to come, some of them are likely to come soon, since December 25 was one of four “quarter days” each year when rent payments are due. That can be a tipping point for shops that are struggling to balance the books.

But as retail analysts often point out, people still enjoy shopping as an in-person activity, even if the future of the multi-floor department store seems to be in doubt.  

And there are hopes that if some excess retail space is converted to residential, there could be a bigger town centre population to drive the return of shopping.