WINCHESTER has been ranked in the top 50 centres of retail specialist Harper Dennis Hobbs’s new Vitality Index.

The list was compiled to rank the top 500 British retail centres by scoring the quality of the retail offered, rather than just the size, seeing Winchester come in at 35 – just one ahead of York.

Hobbs’s index claimed the retail spend potential of the former capital is £410,707,986.

The aim of the index is to provide a quarterly benchmark for occupiers and potential investors.

The strength of the High Street is a matter of some debate with the Silver Hill redevelopment in the pipeline.

Jonathan De Mello, head of retail consultancy at HDH, said: “This is the first ever retail ranking for Great Britain to incorporate 'vitality’, taking into account the quality of retail provision in a centre. We will be releasing this research quarterly to track changes in the rankings and indicate which centres are improving and which are falling further into decline.

“This key new metric for the market will be attractive to retailers and investors alike, as it enables them to assess which centres are growing fast in terms of the quality of retail, and as such where trading performance - and investment opportunities - can be maximised. No retailer should ever open in a location purely based on market size. The best performing retailers plan their expansion by evaluating the quality of retail centres and the suitability of the centre to their brand.”

Centres that came in at the bottom of the list were Morecambe, Llanelli and Dudley – the latter of which scored a vitality score of just 5 out of 400 whereas Winchester scored 159.

Catherine Turness, Winchester Business Improvement District manager, said: “Having just received positive statistics in the BID’s latest Business Barometer report, it is pleasing to see that this new data published by Harper Dennis Hobbs supports our findings. Winchester is flourishing - with a High Street vacancy rate of just under 4 per cent and confidence levels amongst BID businesses is at +8 (on a -10 to +10 scale), the highest recording since the beginning of the survey two years ago.

“Our conversations with commercial property agents suggests that there are companies interested in the premises currently available within the High Street but the complexity of national company liquidations, which is the reason behind the majority of these vacancies, sadly means it takes longer than we would like to get them filled.”