Designer Outlet West Midlands, Cannock: Shops, Parking, Directions and Opening Times

The newest designer outlet in the region opened on the one day in 2021 that English shops were allowed to reopen, on greenfield land beside a nature reserve at Cannock. It is operated by McArthurGlen but owned by Aviva Investors and the Richardson family — a distinction that matters more than usual just now, and one a lot of coverage gets wrong. Here is what is on the site, what the operator publishes, and what nobody publishes at all.

Last checked 5 September 2026 · Opening times and store lists change — check with the centre before travelling.

Designer Outlet West Midlands stands on Eastern Way, off Lichfield Road at Cannock in Staffordshire, on an eleven-hectare site that was open field until 2018. It opened on Monday 12 April 2021 — the exact day English non-essential retail was allowed to reopen after lockdown — with 41 stores trading out of 80-plus planned. It has roughly doubled since.

The most important thing on this page is who owns it, because it is easy to get wrong right now. The outlet is owned by Aviva Investors, on behalf of Aviva Life and Pensions, in a joint venture with the Richardson family. McArthurGlen operates and manages it. Cannock is not a Frasers site. Frasers Group has been buying outlets — it took Designer Outlet East Midlands at Mansfield on 1 June 2026, and CoStar's report of a roughly £400m Aviva deal covered York and East Midlands only. Cannock was not in it, and no sale of Cannock has ever been reported by anyone.

The second trap is the name. Designer Outlet West Midlands is Cannock. Designer Outlet East Midlands is Mansfield. They are different centres with different owners, and aggregator sites conflate them constantly. If you are reading something about "the Midlands designer outlet", check which one it means before you act on it.

There is no standalone website. The operator's pages live at mcarthurglen.com, and the operator publishes no phone number for the centre at all.

What follows is drawn from the operator's own pages, West Midlands Railway, AccessAble, Cannock Chase District Council's planning record, the Express & Star and Birmingham Live, and trade coverage. Where sources disagree we print both. Where something is unverified, we say so rather than guess.

The essentials

Opening times

Five sources, one outlier, and for once we can explain the outlier. Three of the operator's own pages — guest services, plan your visit and the store directory — plus West Midlands Railway's own days-out page all agree: 10am to 8pm Monday to Wednesday, 9am to 9pm Thursday to Saturday, 10am to 6pm on Sunday.

The operator's gift-cards page disagrees, giving Thursday and Friday 10am to 8pm and Saturday 9am to 8pm. The reason is on the record: the Express & Star reported on 25 July 2024 that the centre had extended its trading to 9pm on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays. The gift-cards page simply never caught up. It is stale data, not a conflict — so use the 9am to 9pm times.

No bank holiday, Christmas, Boxing Day, New Year or Easter hours are published anywhere, by the operator or by anyone else, for any year. If you are planning a holiday trip, you will have to check on the day, and there is no centre phone number published to check with.

Getting there

By road

Use the postcode WS11 7JZ, which is what the operator itself publishes as the satnav postcode. The site entrance is on Eastern Way, off Lichfield Road, and the address sits on the A5190.

We are not printing a motorway junction number, because the operator does not publish one. All it says is that there is "easy access from the M6, M6 Toll, A5 and A38" — four roads and no junction. Visit Staffordshire says junction 11 of the M6, and we are telling you that is what Visit Staffordshire says rather than adopting it as fact, because a wrong junction on the M6 is an expensive mistake and the landlord has never confirmed it.

Parking

1,822 free spaces, with no time limit, across six surface car parks lettered A to F. That is a generous provision and the absence of a time limit is genuinely unusual — most outlets cap you at three or five hours.

Which letter you want depends on what you need. The drop-off point and the Blue Badge bays — more than ten of them — are in Car Park C, and only in Car Park C. Car Park F is the one with a 2.3m (7ft 7in) height restriction, and it is loose chippings and uneven underfoot; A to E have no barrier at all, though E slopes. Note that the height limit comes from AccessAble's survey rather than from the operator, which publishes no height information.

No ANPR system or enforcement contractor is named by anyone. A multi-storey car park taking capacity to 2,500 was approved on 10 February 2022, and we can find no evidence it was ever built, so we have printed the surface count. One trap while you are searching: stories from 2024 about a multi-storey car park in Cannock being demolished are about the town centre one, a separate £9m Levelling Up project, and have nothing to do with the outlet.

By train

This is the good one. Cannock station (CAO), on Mill Street at WS11 8NQ, is the nearest station, and West Midlands Railway publishes the walk that the outlet itself does not: "just a 5-10 minute walk from Cannock Station, taking you through the scenic Mill Green and Hawks Green Valley Nature Reserve". There is a taxi rank at the station if you would rather not walk it.

That description is the train operator's, not the outlet's, and it is the only published walking time we have found for this site.

By bus

The stop is registered as "Hawks Green McArthurGlen Outlet", with ATCO codes 3800C221101 (Stand A) and 3800C221102 (Stand B). Two services are confirmed: route 60, Chaserider's Cannock to Lichfield service, and the X51, National Express West Midlands from Birmingham via Walsall to Cannock.

A route 877 appears on a Chaserider map but we could not confirm it serves the outlet, so we have not printed it as a way of getting here.

Accessibility

There is a Changing Places toilet on site — but the operator does not say where it is, which rather undercuts the point of having one. Ask at Guest Services. SignLive BSL interpreting is available.

Wheelchair and stroller hire is where the sources part company: the operator describes it as "complimentary", while AccessAble says it is only available if pre-booked. Both are printed because we cannot reconcile them; if you need a chair on the day, ring ahead through Guest Services rather than assuming one will be waiting. Kiddy Cars are available for children.

There is no sensory or quiet room and no hearing loop mentioned by the operator or by AccessAble. Blue Badge parking and the drop-off point are in Car Park C only, which is worth knowing before you commit to a car park on arrival.

The shops

The store directory is server-rendered and fully readable, which is more than can be said for most, and it lists 60-plus brands. The headline count is 75 stores as at November 2025 — up from 41 at opening in 2021 and "over 60" in August 2024. Planning permission allows up to 130. Ignore the "over 45" on the operator's own travel-diary page; it is years out of date.

The line-up

The roster is more premium than the Cannock location might lead you to expect: Polo Ralph Lauren, BOSS, Hugo, Nike, adidas, Barbour, Belstaff, Coach, Kate Spade, Lacoste, Next, Reiss and The North Face among the 60-plus brands listed.

Eating

Around 10 restaurants and cafes as of August 2024, including wagamama, Five Guys, Slim Chickens and Love Churros, which opened at the end of July 2024.

What has arrived

• More than 30 brands in the first three years of trading, which is a fast fill for a scheme that opened into a pandemic.
• French Connection — 17 April 2025, Unit 42, described at the time as "a light, bright new concept".
• Polo Ralph Lauren — 11 July 2025, with a launch weekend running to 13 July. The operator called it "our biggest store opening ever"; the store's size has never been published, so we cannot tell you how big "biggest" is.

What has closed

Nothing has ever been reported as closing here in five years of trading. We searched the Express & Star and Birmingham Live specifically for this. That is a statement about the record, not about reality — it means no closure has been reported, not that no shop has ever shut.

One thing we have deliberately not turned into a closure list: a Birmingham Live piece from November 2025 named Denby, FatFace, Fossil, Hackett, Hotel Chocolat, Jack Wills, Radley, Sole Trader and M&S, and those names are absent from the current directory. Absence from a directory is not a closure — brands come and go seasonally, units get renamed, directories lag — so we are not printing them as departures.

Phase II, which is proposed and not consented

An extension was announced between 28 November and 1 December 2025: about 30% bigger, taking the centre from 75 to around 100 stores across 25 new units, with a street food destination, up to 500 jobs, and a target of 2027.

Be careful with this. The planning application, CH/23/0394, covering 13,712 sq m, was advertised on 6 December 2023 and its consultation closed on 28 December 2023. No decision has been published anywhere — not on the council's pages, not on the public notice portal, not in the Express & Star, not in Place, and Insider is robots-blocked to us. So the extension is proposed, not consented, and the Richardson family's own comments about it are forward-looking statements rather than confirmations.

The other Cannock scheme

Orbital Retail Park Cannock is a completely separate development — 123,215 sq ft over 11 units, sold by Clearbell to British Land for £27.6m, completing 11 December 2024 (Clearbell had paid M&G £14.75m for it). Its tenants include Aldi, PureGym, an M&S Foodhall, Boots, Pets at Home, Tapi and Flooring Superstore. There is an M&S at both, which is exactly the sort of thing that gets the two schemes muddled together.

Useful to know

Gift cards

Two tiers, Classic and Premium, with a £3.50 upgrade between them. The operator's own condition: "For Gift Card purchases £120+ please bring your ID". Denominations, expiry and any fees are not published.

The discount claim

The centre advertises savings of "up to 60%". No methodology for that figure is published anywhere — no baseline, no basket, no explanation of what it is measured against. Outlet discounting is real, but treat the headline number as marketing rather than as a measurement.

Dogs, Wi-Fi and the small stuff

The centre is dog-friendly, there is free Wi-Fi, and there is phone charging at Guest Services. There is a children's play area behind wagamama and Five Guys. A "Recycle Your Fashion" scheme gives 10% off. On the greener side of things, there are 190 sq m of solar panels and beehives on site.

Things nobody publishes

A long list, and worth knowing before you drive over: no centre phone number, no confirmation of cash machines, no lockers, no lost property arrangements, no click-and-collect service, no VIP or membership scheme, no coach parking information, no bank holiday or seasonal hours, no EV tariff or charging speed, and no location for the Changing Places toilet. None of that means these things are absent — only that they are not on the record.

Getting the right centre

Two things to keep straight. This is the West Midlands outlet at Cannock, not the East Midlands one at Mansfield — different centre, different owner. And Orbital Retail Park is a different Cannock scheme entirely, with its own M&S. Check which one a review or a store listing is actually describing.

How it got here

This is a greenfield scheme, which is rare for a British outlet of this size: nothing was demolished to build it. The site sits beside the council-run Mill Green Nature Reserve, on land owned by Cannock Chase District Council, and its planning name was Mill Green Designer Outlet Village — the name you will still find on council documents.

The permissions came in stages. The council passed a resolution in December 2015, the Secretary of State gave it the green light, and full permission was granted on 28 September 2016: 26,505 sq m of floorspace, up to 130 stores, about 2,000 parking spaces, an investment of over £110m and more than 1,200 jobs, with U+I and Rioja Developments as developers. A development consortium formed in December 2017 at £160m, and £400,000 was pledged to Cannock town centre in January 2018.

The land purchase completed on 3 July 2018, covering about 29 acres. The price has never been disclosed. Building started that month, to a design by architects Holder Mathias, with brickwork by Phoenix, across an 11-hectare site.

Then the delays. The opening was targeted first for spring 2020 and then for autumn 2020, and both were missed. What it finally got was Monday 12 April 2021 — the first day English non-essential retail was allowed to trade again after the winter lockdown, which is either the worst or the best possible opening day depending on how you look at it. It opened with 41 stores of the 80-plus planned.

Growth since has been steady: more than 30 brands added in the first three years, "over 60" stores by August 2024, 75 by November 2025, and footfall of about 4 million a year against a target of 5 million within four years. The 10 millionth visitor since opening came through over the weekend of 31 August to 1 September 2024, and centre manager David Jackson marked the milestone in the Express & Star on 30 August 2024.

On the local reaction, we have wording but not sources, so read it as such. Our research record preserves three phrases from the scheme's champions: Councillor George Adamson, then leader of Cannock Chase District Council, calling it "the best thing to ever happen to Cannock"; Councillor Gordon Alcott calling it "the biggest single investment in the District ever made"; and Giles Membrey, managing director of Rioja Developments, describing the location as "the best site in the West Midlands for a designer outlet village". No publication or date was recorded against any of the three, so we have not presented them as a sourced quotation and you should not treat them as one.

Ownership has never changed. Aviva Investors, on behalf of Aviva Life and Pensions, holds the outlet in joint venture with the Richardson family; McArthurGlen operates it. The split between the two owners has never been published and our last primary confirmation of the arrangement is from 2018 — but no sale has ever been reported, by anyone, at any point. Frasers Group bought Designer Outlet East Midlands at Mansfield on 1 June 2026 and Designer Outlet York around the same time; Cannock was not part of that. When we fetched frasersplus.com/destinations directly on 3 September 2026 it listed Braehead, Designer Outlet East Midlands, Designer Outlet Leeds, Luton and Designer Outlet Swindon — and neither Cannock nor York, which had already completed. That list lags completions, so it is useful for what it includes and worthless as evidence of what it excludes.