Alongside the more traditional OOT bulky home improvement focus, landlords are increasingly looking to bring in key fashion and comparison brands and grocery retailing, as a result not only appealing to the ‘home owner’ but attracting consumers that may not have previously ventured on to a retail park for those kind of goods.

Value retailers have become a key part of that process and recognise the personal commercial advantage it presents to them; using one such retailer as an anchor or key tenant can draw a broad target audience to a retail scheme that also contains mass market and more aspirational retail brands. This provides consumers with a choice across a broad retail pitch and gives the Value orientated retailers access to a large and varied demographic.

Figure 3 highlights the growth of the Value retail market from a national context. This report focusses on the significance that the OOT retail sector has had in shaping and stimulating this growth. The expansion of the Value sector has been steady for both the in-town/high street and OOT retail sectors since 2011. The stand out growth in the market however has clearly been in the OOT sector, which since 2014 has grown by 106%, from c.5,000 to over 10,000 retail units nationally.