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On many occasions during the past 20 years I have warned about the perils to localities associated with retail-led regeneration schemes in towns and cities – and, in fact, I was previously concerned more about the direct impact on other parts of the city centre.

In 2009 I wrote a paper about the more worrying impacts of the successful and highly praised Westquay Shopping Centre in Southampton. It does not bring me any joy to know that since the paper was published in the Journal of Place Management and Development, excepting the main street adjoining the new centre, the rest of the existing retail areas of the city centre has been effectively crippled.

Unintended, although often predictable, consequences of bright new shining developments which could only be afforded by the usual fascias of corporate retailers offered a new showcase to attract people into town and city centres always carried a risk which many local authorities have studiously overlooked. Unfortunately, with the current and future Covid-19 effect, the perils of these developments are now likely to have major negative impacts.

Anyone with knowledge of Rochdale will be aware that the local authority there had a tie-in with a developer in that their town’s market was incorporated into a new indoor retail centre. Rochdale itself was badly suffering as a retail centre from the competition offered an easy journey away in Oldham or a bit further away by Manchester city centre or the Trafford Centre. The owners of the retail mall in question went into administration and ultimately ceased to exist. Yet the mall, with its tenants and the attached market hall, were still trading. In these circumstances the Treasury solicitors take formal ownership of the property in the ancient vestige of feudalism known as Bono Vacantia.

Any property in that condition is in effect in limbo. No-one collects the rent, although contractually all tenants remain liable. No-one maintains the fabric and, crucially, no new tenants can be signed up. No marketing is carried out and no leases can be renewed at expiry. Hardly the features of a dynamic retailing centre.

I have no idea how many times malls have faced this situation, but Covid-19 is likely to be presenting the highest likelihood since retail malls first opened in the UK for a catastrophic level of similar failures. It will not be entirely the fault of Covid-19; indeed it will be the fault of a complete lack of foresight on the part of many actors in the retail industry, the retail property market and local authorities since the credit crunch 12 years ago signalled a need for caution.

The UK already had a glut of retail space and yet, as had been the case for the previous 50 years excepting a short-lasting moratorium on the building of new centres around 2009, the impetus continued. Bright new shining centres which were going to achieve great things for the local economy. Then things started to go wrong.

In the past ten years there has been a rise in the number of Company Voluntary Arrangements taken out by retailers at cost to the landlords. The increasing numbers of these, where retailers had not managed to find a means of satisfying their investors without continual expansion, inevitably was going to end like a train hitting the buffers. Sadly, the trains are entering the terminus simultaneously on adjoining platforms.

It is difficult to be too sympathetic for the landlords either since they too lived in this world and were surely aware of the new trading environments of retailers post-credit crunch which was then exacerbated by the Brexit dip. I accept that it would have been difficult to predict the dire impact of Covid-19, but there seems to have been systematic imprudence by all concerned in that within a month of this pandemic affecting the UK alarm bells were already starting to ring.