Track the changing business landscape in your high streets with new HSD Hub reports

Rachel Rodriguez Rachel Rodriguez 📢 Announcement

Two new reports on the High Streets Data Hub let you explore what types of businesses are in your area and how have they changed over the last 10 years. 

To access:
  1. Log-in to your HSD Hub account (borough/BID username and HSDS-set password)
  2. Select a Focus Area > “What types of businesses are in the area?” or “How are business types changing?” reports.
These new reports provide a clear picture of the types of businesses operating in local centres and how they’re changing over time. Powered by Local Data Company data, you can now use the Hub to:
  • Explore your area’s offer across leisure, service, comparison retail, convenience retail, and more
  • Drill down into 40+ business types, from fashion shops to fast food outlets, nail salons to supermarkets
  • Track change over time, with data available back to 2014
  • Compare areas across your borough and London
 Start using these insights now by:
 

Using the business type summary report: Battersea Power Station (Wandsworth example)

1. Spot what types of businesses are overrepresented or missing
The new “What types of businesses are in the area?” report provides a snapshot of the business mix in every borough, BID, town centre, and high street in London, making it easy to identify gaps and over-concentrations in provision.
 
We looked at Battersea, where the regeneration of Battersea Power Station drove the creation of the new town centre in Wandsworth. By using the new Retail mix reports in the Hub, we can explore how the Power Station has shaped the new town centre’s business profile and assess whether it serves both destination and local needs. 
 
To try it: Select your borough > Choose a retail area type > Open the “What types of businesses are in the area?” report > Choose to view the report by Business counts, Premises counts, or Floorspace 
Pick your area, metric, and time period in the “What types of businesses are in my area?” report Download
We looked across Wandsworth town centres, to see how retail mix varies across them. 
Multi-Area “What types of businesses are in my area?” report on Wandsworth’s town centres, by business counts, from June 2025 Download
Scanning across Wandsworth, we see that Battersea town centre dominates the rest in comparison retail (e.g., fashion, jewellers, furniture), which makes up 57% of the businesses in the area – unsurprising with the introduction of the shopping centre within Battersea Power Station. However, convenience retail (e.g., supermarkets and other food provision), accounted for just 4% of the businesses in Battersea, and services (e.g., banks, dry cleaners, post offices, etc.) only 7% of businesses – both much lower than the rest of the town centres in the borough, raising the question of whether the provision in the area is meeting local needs.  
 
2. Zoom into a specific area
Selecting a specific town centre reveals a single-area report, which provides a deep dive of the types of businesses that making up the area.

Looking at Battersea town centre, we see that Fashion & General Clothing dominates the Comparison offer in the area, while Restaurants, Cafes & Fast Food make up most of the Leisure offer– again emphasising the Power Station shopping centre’s role in driving a retail and dining-led economy in the town centre. 
Single-Area “What types of businesses are in my area?” report on Battersea town centres, by business counts, from June 2025 Download

Using the business change-over-time report: Putney (Wandsworth example)

3. Track how your high street is changing and evidence which use types are growing
Using the new “How are business types changing?" report, you can also track how business mix has changed over time, back to 2014 – allowing you to test your hypotheses on what’s driving trends in your local centre. 

To try it: Select your borough > Choose a retail area type > Choose a Focus Area > Open the “How are business types changing?” report > Choose to view the report by Business counts, Premises counts, or Floorspace
 
During the 2024 Incubator Programme, Nicola from Putney BID explored the effect of a rapid increase in fast food restaurants in Putney town centre, which was becoming a concern for local residents. She suspected that planning class policy in 2020 caused the rapid increase, and we tested this hypothesis in the new retail mix report.

We compared number of Cafes & Fast Food businesses in Putney Town Centre in June 2019 (before planning use class changes) to June 2022.
Single-Area “What types of businesses are in my area?” report on Putney town centre, by business counts, comparing June 2019 to June 2022. Download
We found that the Cafes & Fast Food offer had grown 42% in just three years, a significant shift that supports Nicola’s hypothesis, providing strong evidence that they did indeed affect the offer in Putney town centre. 

Zooming out further: we filtered the report by the classifications of Comparison, Leisure, and Service, changed the view to floorspace, and compared December 2024 to December 2014.
Single-Area “What types of businesses are in my area?” report on Putney town centre, by total floorspace, comparing June 2019 to June 2022. Download
This reveals a changing Putney town centre – where Comparison shopping once dominated, in the last 10 years its floorspace has decreased by a quarter, while Leisure has become much more prominent – reflecting changing consumer behaviour.

4. Track how business types are changing across a portfolio of areas
To try it: Select your borough > Choose a retail area type > Open the “How are business types changing?” report > View by Business counts, Premises counts, or Floorspace > Choose a business type of interest
Filtering for your classifications and categories of interest in the “How are business types changing?” report Download
We looked across Wandsworth’s town centres to understand whether the trends we saw across Cafes & Fast Food in Putney, were also happening across the borough. We compared the changes in the Cafes & Fast Food category across Wandsworth’s town centres, from June 2019 to June 2022.
Multi-Area “How are business types changing?” report in Wandsworth’s town centres, by total floorspace, comparing June 2019 to June 2022. Download
Putney saw the largest change in floorspace in the category, gaining 1,700 square metres – however it is clear that this category is growing across the borough, with only Earlsfield seeing a decrease in floorspace.

Need help?  

  • Get started on by logging into the HSD and exploring the Retail Mix Reports
  • Schedule a data surgery for 1:1 assistance from the HSDS team, available every Thursday 10-11am: BOOK HERE 
  • Log issues and submit feature requests through the HSDS Feedback FormÂ