CLICK and collect services combined with festive bargains have seen retailers at St Helens’ Church Square Shopping Centre reporting a strong start to 2015.

The positive picture from store bosses comes despite the empty units on the high street that mean the town centre is subject to gloomy debate and criticism.

Church Square chiefs insist more than a million customers have passed through the centre in the last two months seeking Christmas presents and hunting down New Year's bargains.

They believe shoppers are also spending more on each visit, meaning store managers are hitting their company sales targets, and that click and collect is proving online shopping is not necessarily damaging to stores.

Click and Collect services along with shoppers on the hunt for festive bargains helped push up the numbers for Church Square.

Steve Brogan the shopping centre manager said: “This is an excellent start to the trading year for our stores. The past 12 months has seen new retailers move into the centre, including Roman and Costa, which has widened our offer for shoppers.

“Click and Collect has really taken off this year. Shoppers get to choose online and then pick up their goods at a time to suit them. It means they know an item they really want will be ready to collect rather than worrying it has sold out.

“It’s good that the diverse retail offer is attracting shoppers into St Helens to spend. I can see that we’ve had one of our best Christmas and New Year sales times by the numbers passing through.

“It really started with Black Friday. All the retailers had their own offers which helped bring in shoppers and it took off after that.”

River Island in La Grange Arcade was one of the best of the branch to perform in the region. Manager Ann Darcy said: “This is the second year we have had Click and Collect and it is such a busy service. Shoppers really like it.

“We exceeded our sales targets for the Christmas period and during the January sales we were still performing well.”