Six months after the shutters came down on Woolworths, seven out of ten of its former stores are still empty, a study for The Times has found.

The research highlights the dire conditions in the retail and commercial property industries and will heighten further fears that the shift to out-of-town shopping centres and the rise of internet shopping have left the high street in a state of terminal decline.

The Local Data Company analysed every former Woolworths site in Britain in the first systematic study of its kind since the store group’s collapse. It suggests that the demise of Woolworths has accelerated the degradation of the high street, as discount stores and pound shops take the place of mainstream retailers.

Iceland, the discount frozen food retailer, has taken about 50 stores, with Bargain Madness, 99p Stores, Heron Frozen Foods, Poundland, Home Bargains and Carpet Right all taking at least ten stores each. All these stores were acquired direct from the administrator, suggesting that these retailers were prepared to pay substantial premiums to buy welllocated large town centre stores.

However, many retailers have waited for the leases on the stores to revert to the landlords and then have negotiated attractive rent-free deals with them. In many cases, landlords have had to undertake refurbishment programmes; in some, they have had to remove asbestos. All this has meant that the collapse of Woolworths has had a devastating impact on landlords, since the combination of reduced rents and incentive packages at Woolworth’s prime sites has led to a drop in rents across the board.

Many discount retailers who had a presence in the North of England, such as Home Bargains, Bargain Madness and Heron, now have a foothold in the South. In Greater London, more than half the former Woolworths stores have found new occupiers; however, in Scotland about 80 per cent of the 82 sites remain unoccupied, while 90 per cent of sites in the North East of England still lie empty.

The collapse of Woolworths was also lucrative for Deloitte, the accountant, which acted as administrator. It earned £3.8 million in fees from liquidating the company, while restructuring specialists and consultants earned a further £8 million, according to creditors’ documents seen by The Times.

Deloitte sold the Woolworths brand name and some sub-brands, such as Ladybird Clothing, to Shop Direct Group for £7 million. Shop Direct, which is the owner of Littlewoods, the mail-order business, has resurrected the Woolworths name as an internet-only business.

Yet Shop Direct, which is owned by Sir David and Sir Frederick Barclay, the owners of the Daily Telegraph, has competition in its fight for the soul of Woolworths. Tony Page, a former Woolworths commercial director, and Sir Geoff Mulcahy, a former chief executive, hope to relaunch the company in all but name, beginning in the North of England.

Rob Alston, a retail partner at Cushman & Wakefield, the property specialists, said: “The fact that only about 20 per cent of the Woolworths stores have been sold by the administrators says a lot about current retail demand and, whilst a substantial number of other units have either been let or are currently under offer via the landlords, there is a still a huge hole in many towns in the UK.”

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