More than 1,200 high street stores closed during the first half of 2019, with more than 5,000 closures in the past 12 months across the UK, according to research from Asktraders. The research looked at data from Link ATM, Which? and the Office for National Statistics (ONS), and analysed ATM, retail store and bank closures in fifty of the largest towns and cities in the UK. Each location was ranked according to ATM, bank and retail decline, with the best-performing awarded a score of one and the worst a score of 50. Across the three measures, the average score was taken to reveal the areas with the worst high streets in the UK.