I've been visiting shops across this patch for the best part of a year now, and it's genuinely not what it was even eighteen months ago — thinner rails in places, managers mentioning tighter rotas, that sense of a shop running leaner than it used to. That's not just a feeling. The national numbers back it up, and they tell a stranger story than "charity shops are struggling": shops are closing at the same time as more people than ever want what they sell.
151 major UK charities closed in 2024/25, up from 87 the year before — a 74% jump in a single year, according to Charity Commission data analysed by chartered accountants Lubbock Fine (their definition of "major" is a charity with revenue over £50,000).
The shop-by-shop picture is just as stark. Cancer Research UK is closing around 90 shops by May 2026, with up to 100 more by April 2027 — shrinking its core high street chain to roughly 320 shops nationally. Barnardo's closed 45 of its 500-plus shops in 2024/25 alone. Both charities point to the same pressures: rising employer National Insurance contributions, energy and rent inflation, and — this is the part that surprised me — growing competition from online resale platforms.
This isn't happening because people have stopped wanting cheap, secondhand goods. Quite the opposite. Research cited by Civil Society found 48% of people in England and Wales are shopping more in charity shops, or considering it, because of the cost of living — 53% specifically because items are cheaper secondhand, and 73% now say they're entirely comfortable being seen going in, which is a real shift from a decade or two ago. The UK's wider secondhand goods market grew by 15% to £21 billion over the same period.
So the shops aren't closing because nobody wants what they sell. They're closing because their own costs are rising faster than they can absorb, at the same time as a chunk of the good-quality stock that used to keep their rails full — and their finances healthy — gets listed for cash on Vinted or Depop before it's ever donated. People are more comfortable buying secondhand than they've ever been; increasingly, that doesn't mean buying it from a charity shop.
I've written before about the collapse of the rag market, which used to give shops a financial cushion for stock they couldn't sell. Put that together with this piece and the picture gets clearer: shops are losing money on the stuff they can't sell, losing some of the good stuff before it even reaches them, and absorbing steeper operating costs — all while more shoppers than ever are walking through the door hoping to find something. It's not one problem. It's three, landing on the same shops at the same time.
I won't name a specific local shop as being at risk here without being certain — that wouldn't be fair to the staff and volunteers keeping it running. But the pattern is real, and it's part of why I visit every shop on this directory in person rather than trusting old listings, and part of why I've started buying shops' surplus stock directly when it would otherwise sit unsold or go to rag. If you're donating, giving good-quality items directly to a shop rather than listing everything for sale first genuinely helps keep it viable — not as a guilt trip, just as a fact about where the money actually comes from.
If you manage a shop and this is part of what you're up against — rag collection letting you down, or more stock than you can move — I'd like to talk to you about it.