UK retail footfall down 6% last week
Retail footfall dropped by 6% last week compared to the prior seven day period as working from home guidance continued to have an impact.
According to retail specialist Springboard, footfall was down 25.6% in Central London, although local high streets experienced a more modest decline of 10.9% from the week before. Footfall in shopping centres fell by 4.4% but retail parks saw an increase of 2.9%.
Diane Wehrle, insights director at Springboard, said: “High streets bore the brunt of the drop in shopper activity, with the decline from the New Year week more than twice that in shopping centres, although to some degree shopping centre footfall may have been insulated by the great Christmas present return.”
Meanwhile, Springboard’s ‘Back to the Office’ benchmark, which tracks those areas closest to offices, declined by 15.2% in the week in Central London and by 17.1% in regional city centres outside of the capital.
Footfall across all UK retail destinations last week remained significantly lower than in the same week in 2019, with a decline of 21.8%, but this emanated mainly from high streets and shopping centres where there were respective drops of 30.9% and 23.7%. In contrast, retail park footfall was just 0.2% below the 2019 level.
