RETAIL DISTRIBUTION: SOME REGIONAL COMPARISONS

Date01 November 1957
AuthorJ. Sleeman
DOIhttp://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9485.1957.tb00235.x
Published date01 November 1957
RETAIL DISTRIBUTION
:
SOME REGIONAL
COMPARISONS
In his article
on
The Retail Distributive Trades
in
Scotland,
published in the
Journal
for February
1956,
Mr. W.
R.
Matheson
brings
out
the interesting fact that,
on
the average for the two coun-
tries, shops in Scotland are fewer and larger than
in
England and
Wales. Although Scotland
is
not perhaps strictly speaking a
'
region
',
yet it
is
true that the population of Scotland
is
very largely concentrated
into
a
single industrial area, whereas that of England and Wales is
dispersed over a number
of
areas of different characterstics and roughly
comparable size.
To
get a clearer picture, therefore,
it
is
worth while
to go a stage further and compare Scotland with the various standard
regions south
of
the Border. In the tables below, the Census of Dis-
tribution data are compared with regional populations as given in the
1951
census.
TABLE
I
REGIONS IN ORDER
OF
NUMBER
OF
ESTABLISHMENTS
IN
RELATION TO POPULATION,
1951
Region
1.
North-western
.
.
.
2.
East and West Ridings
.
3.
North Midland
. .
4.
Midland
. .
.
.
5.
South-eastern8
.
6.
Wales and Monmouh
:
7.
South-western
. . .
8.
Eastern
...
9.
Greater London
. .
10.
Southern
.
.
. .
11.
Northern
. . .
,
12.
Scotland
.
. .
.
Establishments per
10,WO
population
168.8
158.3
155.7
142.6
142.3
141.5
131.5
1309
127.6
127.2
125.0
123.0
a
The London and South-eastern standard Region
excluding Greater London.
Scotland certainly has the smallest number of establishments
in
relation to population of any region, though the North
runs
her pretty
close, and the South and Greater London are not very much higher.
The real contrast which emerges is that between the industrial areas
of Lancashire, Yorkshire, the Midlands and Wales, and the rest, for
it is these areas (together with the South-east), which have the pattern
of
a large number of shops.. Northumberland and Durham, in this
225

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