Shopping mall Trafford Centre in Greater Manchester; White Rose Centre in Leeds; the Merry Hill Centre near Dudley; and Bluewater in Kent. These centres were built in the 1980s and 1990s, but planning regulations prohibit the construction of any more. Out-of-town shopping developments in the UK are now focused on retail parks, which consist of groups of warehouse style shops with individual entrances from outdoors. Planning policy prioritizes the development of existing town centres, although with patchy success. Westfield Stratford City, in Stratford (London), is the largest shopping centre in Europe with over 330 shops, 50 restaurants and an 11 screen cinema
Merry Hill Shopping Centre were trading from the site. In November of that year, the Richardson twins announced plans to expand Merry Hill into a large indoor shopping centre to rival the recently completed developments at Telford in Shropshire and Milton Keynes in Buckinghamshire, with a view to completing the development by 1990. The building contract for the shopping malls was let to Tarmac Construction. The first shopping centre and a second phase of the retail park (including Halfords and B&Q which is now Toys R Us) opened in April 1986 (incorporating the Carrefour hypermarket which opened on 1 July that year). However, Carrefour