This is Britain’s most barren high street, where over a third of shops lay empty and there are no free cash machines.

Burslem in Stoke-on-Trent is the country’s biggest ghost town, with 44 shops sitting empty, at a time when High Streets across the country are experiencing record store closures.

Once a thriving industrial town, it is now awash with boarded up windows and to-let signs and has the highest shop vacancy rate in the country.

Empty shops in Queen Street, Burslem, which has the country’s emptiest high street (Picture: SWNS)

The Staffordshire town is lined with battered buildings with boarded up windows (Picture: SWNS)

Figures show 44 out of 130 units are lying empty in Burslem (Picture: SWNS)

The UK’s emptiest high street where 33.8 per cent of shops are empty (Picture: SWNS)

As well as shops, all of the town’s banks, including Natwest, Nationwide and Lloyds, have turned their backs on the town, taking their free cash machines with them.




The only cash machines left after the mass exodus charge between 95p and £3.50 for withdrawals.

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A total of 33.8 per cent of Burslem’s shop units are unoccupied, with the town losing 13 independent shops and two chain stores in 2018 and gaining none.

According to PWC – who published research on the declining state of British high streets today – Stoke-on-Trent has seen 20 chain stores closing in the last year and just eight opening.

The national average is nine openings a day compared to 16 closures.

Having held the title as Britain’s most vacant town for some years people have described Burslem as ‘dead’ and like an ‘abandoned town in a cowboy movie’.

The town once had a thriving industry but has sadly been in decline for years (Picture: SWNS)

The news comes at a time when high streets across the country have been struggling (Picture: SWNS)

Not all hope is lost as Stoke-on-Trent city council has secured a £10m housing investment fund (Picture: SWNS)

One person described Burslem as an ‘abandoned town in a cowboy movie’ (Picture: SWNS)

But there may still be some hope for Burslem, nicknamed the Mother Town by locals.

The Stoke Sentinel reports that £10m in Government funding was recently secured by Stoke-on-Trent city council to build around 1,100 houses in the town centre’s old manufacturing sites.

Where high street brands have failed, niche and quirky ‘destination shops’ like speciality beer shop Otter’s Tears, a handful of bridal and dress alteration stores, a vape shop and a family run microwave and computers business have set up shop.

Councillor Alan Dutton told the paper: ‘Burslem is never going to be a retail centre. We have got to get it to be a niche town centre, with a cafe culture. We need destination shops.’

Helen Dickinson OBE, Chief Executive of the British Retail Consortium told Metro.co.uk businesses are facing ‘immense cost pressures’ due to ‘spiralling business rates’ rising to over 50 per cent due to minimum wage and pension costs.

She added: ‘And this is not the end, the Government is already consulting on a package of reforms for its Waste and Resources strategy that could see an estimated £3 billion burden placed on struggling retailers.

Unfortunately there is more being destroyed in the city than is being built. There is no growth. The high street of tunstall is getting emptier, burslem is dead.. not even a cash point. Parts of Hanley flattened with no plan to replace. I could go on. Building a hotel means nowt! — UK Adventure Cycling (@philjame5) February 20, 2019

you been to Burslem? It's like an abandoned town in a cowboy movie, swear I saw cattle roaming on the high street! — Paul Marshall (@pdmarshall) April 19, 2017

‘It is no accident that the retail sector is losing jobs and stores while the raft of business costs continue to expand.

‘Retail is undergoing a period of unprecedented change in response to new technologies and changing consumer behaviour.’

She said shops need to adapt to survive in an age where more and more people shop online but said the business rates are depriving them of the resources to innovate.

‘Unless the Government reforms the broken Business Rates system and looks to review the multitude of business cost, we are likely to see further store closures and job losses,’ she added.

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