EMPTY shopping streets are an eyesore on many British high streets and are often a symbol of the decline of a city centre.

Ashley Armstrong, business editor of The Sun, explains why so many retailers are closing their doors.

In many cases, retailers are closing their stores because they are no longer making as much money as they used to due to the rise of online shopping.

Falling retail sales and rising staff costs have made it even more expensive for stores to stay open. In some cases, retailers are closing a store and opening a new one across a high street to show how a city has changed.

The problem is that when a large store closes, the number of customers in the local high street decreases, which risks more stores closing.

Shopping centres are becoming increasingly popular with shoppers who want easy, free parking, now that local governments have increased parking fees in cities.

Many retailers, including Next and Marks & Spencer, are closing their high street stores and instead opening larger stores in better performing shopping centres.

Boss Stuart Machin recently said that when the company moved an outdated store in Chesterfield to a new large store in a shopping centre half a mile away, sales in the area increased by 103 per cent.

In some cases, stores have closed when a retailer went bust, such as Wilko, Debenhams Topshop, Dorothy Perkins and Paperchase, to name a few.

What is becoming increasingly common is that when a chain goes bankrupt, a competing retailer or private equity firm claims the intellectual property rights so they can own the brand and sell it online.

If customer demand is high, they might open a handful of stores, but rarely are there the same number of stores or stores in the same locations.