There are only about sixteen out of town enclosed shopping centres in the UK (as opposed to open air retail parks, which do not count as shopping centres in British English, even though they do in American English). Under current policy, no more will be built. All other British shopping centres are in town and city centres.
In the 1960s and 70s, most town and city centres had seen the development of a major shopping precinct. Redditch, in Worcestershire, Kingfisher Shopping Centre. Birmingham had the Bull ring centre; Manchester, the Arndale Centre; Newcastle, the Eldon Square Shopping Centre and Leeds, the Merrion CentreThere are still few out of town major shopping centres in the UK.
Brent Cross, which opened in 1976, was the country's first out of town shopping centre.
In some cases such as Meadowhall Centre in Sheffield (opened in 1990), they were built because of available land and labour due to the demise of the steel industry in the area.
The Gateshead Metro Centre in Tyneside opened in the mid 1980s and is the largest shopping centre in the UK built on former swamp lands on the banks of the River Tyne.
The Trafford Centre in Manchester was built on the surplus land belonging to the Manchester Ship Canal.