The number of empty shops in Dartford has increased in the first six months of this year according to new research.

The findings were released by the Local Data Company which surveyed 506 town centres and 145,000 shops between January and June.

Dartford is the second-worst town centre in the country with 31% of its shops empty – up 4.5% from last year.

The news comes three months after the town was made one of the initial 12 Portas Pilot towns, receiving £79,000 of cash to boost high street trading.

Dartford Borough Council leader Cllr Jeremy Kite (Con) said: “I’ll be honest, we’ve got too many empty shops and we’re aware of that. There are too many for a town this size so I’m not surprised.

“I think there’s a need to concentrate shops into one area. We’ve got lots of good shops and if they were all on one street we’d probably have one of the healthiest streets in the country.

“Because we’ve got tentacles of shopping going in all directions, we do have empty shops in between so what I’d really like to see is more of a concentration of shopping and to stop the expansion away from the high street.

“We want people to come into town and do their shopping there.

“Hopefully this is one of the things our Portas bid will help with.”

The Local Data Company says that regeneration schemes and Portas Pilots will help cut down the number of empty shops, but says the real problem is, and will remain, the economy and shoppers’ disposable income.

Almost 15,000 shops closed in town centres across the country between 2000 and 2009 but a further 10,000 closed in 2010 and 2011.

Margate, another Portas Pilot town, suffered the worst vacancy rate with 36.5% of empty shops.

British Property Federation chief executive Liz Peace said: “In many places, we need to have a complete rethink about how vacant property could be redeveloped into new uses.

“That will require flexibility on the part of local planning authorities, but equally an acceptance from the property industry and its investors and lenders that in many cases previous values simply cannot be maintained and new lower value uses are the only option.”