Apple, the iPhone and computer giant, is to open a new store at Covent Garden in Central London early next year in a sign of renewed appetite for expansion among retailers.

Liberty International, Britain’s biggest regional landlord and owner of the Covent Garden estate, said yesterday that activity levels among tenants had improved.

The London-based property group reported an increase in footfall in Covent Garden between the second and third quarters. It was further encouraged that the number of tenants going into administration had fallen from “exceptionally high failure levels” to a much lower number in the three months to the end of September.

In the first six months of 2009, Liberty lost tenants for 125 units and £19.3 million of rental income. This fell to 20 units and £3 million of income in the three months to September 30, although Liberty acknowledged that further failures “may well emerge in the next few months”.

David Fischel, chief executive of Liberty, said: “If you go back a year, everyone was in such a state of shock that no one took a decision for months. Normal life is now beginning to resume.”

Mr Fischel added that a recovery in demand for retail commercial property was not confined to London. “The picture across the UK is that big cities are performing better than smaller locations,” he said.

“It is not a case of London versus the rest of the country. Manchester has been doing great. The larger and better-financed retailers are more active, but life is still tough for the smaller retailers.”

Occupancy rates among retailers in the group’s Capital Shopping Centres division improved from 98.3 per cent to 98.9 per cent in the third quarter. The division re-let 50 stores, but at a “significant discount” to previous rental levels, to avoid empty rates.

Echoing the comments of Francis Salway, head of Land Securities, Mr Fischel said that the practice of offering better rental terms to tenants had “begun to settle down” after a period of generous incentives and discounts.

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