The database
The data used in the Retail OSCAR relates to service charges paid by occupiers to owners or managing agents of shopping centres.
For consistency all costs relating to any non retail uses such as office accommodation, leisure or residential are excluded from this analysis. The data in this report covers the costs associated with shared services and maintenance of the common parts of the shopping centre. Costs borne by the occupier in relation to their own demised premises are not included. The data which comprises the 2007 Retail OSCAR comes from audited or certified service charge accounts completed during the 2006 calendar year. All figures are analysed on a net of VAT basis.
Costs are calculated by dividing the total service charge expenditure by the gross internal areas of the retail accommodation within the centre. All service charge weightings or differing bases of recovery are ignored.
The 'Definition of Terms' is set out on page 23 defining the principal cost categories referred to in this analysis.
The representation of 'Small Centres' in this year's report has decreased from 13 to 11, the number of 'Medium Centres' has decreased significantly from 32 to 24 while the number of 'Large Centres' has increased from 63 to 66 which has resulted in an additional 3,967,906 square feet of space being analysed in Retail OSCAR 2007.
Region 2 (South, South West, Midlands, East Anglia and Wales) continues to provide the largest proportion of the data with 40.38% (42 centres), while Regions 1 (London and South East) and 3 (North, Scotland and Northern Ireland) provide 29.81% (31 centres) each. The contribution of each centre type has changed again this year with enclosed air-conditioned centres increasing dramatically from 40% of the sample size in 2006 to 54% in 2007 while enclosed non air-conditioned centres decreased from 30% to 23%. Part enclosed centres remained constant at 13% of the sample size and open centres decreased from 17% to 10%.
This years data includes a split of the costs that make up Management and Soft Services to allow for more in depth analysis of trends going forward. The split of these categories was not undertaken in 2006 and there are therefore a number of gaps in the comparison tables where we do not have the actual split per head of expenditure.