International fashion group, Aurora, has signed a new deal at Cardiff’s Capitol shopping centre for its Oasis, Karen Millen and Coast brands. The three stores, totalling 7,153 sq ft, have been trading in the centre for up to 14 years.

Arcadia Group is opening two new stores at Kingfisher Shopping Centre in Redditch this autumn. Dorothy Perkins and Burton will share a 7,583-sq ft unit in the centre.

Henry Boots Developments has sold three recently completed developments. The 190,000-sq ft Meir Park Scheme in Stoke-on-Trent is being sold to the Ormiston Trust for £10.5m.

ING Real Estate Investment Management has secured a Wilkinson’s and a Currys Digital store at shopping centres in Irvine and Leicester.

Treasury Holdings, on behalf of Real Estate Opportunities (REO), has won full planning permission for the €800m regeneration of Ballymun Town Centre in north Dublin.

A 50,000-sq ft Primark store has joined the line-up at The Rock, a mixed-use scheme due to open next summer in Bury, Greater Manchester.

A new website is transforming the way Hermes’ shopping centres communicate with their audiences at both consumer and business-to-business levels.

John Drummond, founder of outlet specialist The Guinea Group, died in July 2009. Although he was one of the best known characters in the UK outlet business, Drummond started out in mainstream property on the occupier’s side of the fence.

Coverpoint’s Jonathan Doughty serves up his regular shopping centre catering review. This month he visits Memsaab at Highcross Leicester

Serial entrepreneur David Lockhart has just launched his third retail property business, New River Retail. Will he be able to repeat the trick of buying at the bottom and selling at the top one more time?

London and the South East is still the most affluent part of the country, despite the credit crunch. How are its malls faring in the downturn?

Standard Life Investments has announced that the opening of Parkway, its new 475,000-sq ft mixed-use scheme in Newbury, Berkshire, has been postponed to Spring 2011.

Customers have been queuing overnight for bargain electrical goods, and police being called to control crowds at store openings. The brand causing all the fuss is the new Currys Megastore format from electrical giant DSGi.

When funding is already stretched to the limit, will centres choose to invest a substantial sum into digital wayfinding? And can they afford not to?

Managers are always on the lookout for effective advertising sites to attract more revenue into their centres. SaniPost, which combines outdoor advertising with a public hygiene service, seems to tick all the right boxes

A year on from the Lehman Brothers collapse and consumers are spending again. But they’re buying less.

UK retail sales values fell 0.1 per cent on a like-for-like basis from August 2008, when sales had fallen, hit by very wet weather. On a total basis, sales rose 2.2 per cent against a 1.4 per cent gain in August 2008.

New research from global real estate adviser Cushman & Wakefield predicts that 2010 will see the lowest level of European shopping centre development activity for five years. And the UK is no exception.

The Experian National Retail Footfall Index in August revealed that the month showed an overall year-on-year fall in shopper visits of 4.1 per cent.

Lion Yard Shopping Centre held a fashion show on its brand new escalators to celebrate a record deal between Aberdeen Property Investors and fashion chain New Look.

Car park operators are going to great lengths to entice cash-strapped shoppers by drastically slashing rates. But are low prices sustainable?

Mobile phone technology has come on leaps and bounds in the last decade. Along with making calls and sending texts, they can now be used to pay for parking. So how has pay-by-phone established itself in the UK?

The extent of corrosion damage to car parks often reveals itself mid-way through a major refurbishment. Operators need to keep corrosion levels in check or else pay the price

Henderson Global Investors has been appointed by the Australian Government Future Fund to manage its initial UK property investment - a 33 per cent stake in Birmingham's Bullring.

Shopping Centre is coming to Dublin to lead the discussion on the future of our industry. The event is being held on 24th November 2009, in Harvey Nichols First Floor Restaurant, Dundrum Town Centre.