The Moor Sheffield: All the empty shops along city centre's busiest shopping street, including Gap and Burton

That’s just one of several empty shopping units along The Moor, some of which have also been vacant for many months. While there is hope the former Debenhams could soon reopen as a department store, what interest there has been in the other empty stores is less clear.

We took a walk along The Moor and counted nine empty units in total, including two premises in the Moorfoot area. That doesn’t include empty units within the complex housing The Light cinema, where the pizza restaurant Dough&Co closed suddenly at the end of 2022.

While that may sound like a lot, it’s fairly representative of the state of the nation’s high streets at the moment. The British Retail Consortium recently reported how in the fourth quarter of 2022 the overall vacancy rate stood at 13.8 per cent for high streets and 18.2 per cent for shopping centres. Encouragingly, both figures had fallen slightly compared with the previous three months, despite the cost-of-living crisis.

These are undoubtedly challenging times for shops and other businesses, with Sheffield city centre’s last remaining department store, Atkinsons, towards the bottom of The Moor, recently issuing a plea for customers to show their ‘support’ and help secure its future. Elsewhere in the city centre, Bill’s restaurant recently closed and Lisboa Cafe & Patisserie has shut its Peace Gardens branch, citing ‘rising costs’ and ‘dropping footfall’.

But the outlook is not entirely bleak for The Moor or Sheffield city centre as a whole. Five Guys burger restaurant opened on The Moor last summer, with Sports Direct also opening at the former TJ Hughes department store, albeit having relocated from elsewhere in the city centre. When Ann Summers closed its store on The Moor last year, meanwhile, it was quickly replaced by a Clarks shoe shop, which made the short hop from Orchard Square shopping centre.