Retail footfall boosted by last week’s good weather
New figures have shown that retail footfall rose by 7.8% last week from the prior seven day period as the warmer weather encouraged people to go out shopping.
The data from retail specialist Springboard reveals that the number of visits to high streets, shopping centres and retail parks grew by 9.8%, 5.5% and 5.8% respectively.
While footfall last week was 15.7% below the same week in 2019, it was more than double the level of the same time last year when the UK was still in a Covid-19 lockdown.
The good weather in the week particularly benefited high streets where there were strong uplifts across all types of town. While coastal towns saw an increase of 16.6%, outer London and market towns also performed well with respective growth of 12% and 11.5%.
With many office-based employees now able to choose when to work at home, the good weather appeared to encourage them into their offices, which was demonstrated in an 11% increase in the Springboard Central London Back to the Office benchmark. Meanwhile footfall in central London grew by 8% from the week before.
Diane Wehrle, insights director at Springboard, said: “Last Wednesday marked two years since the beginning of the first lockdown and delivered positive news for UK retail destinations last week, which was helped by warm and sunny weather across the UK which lasted the entire week.
“Not only did footfall rise significantly from the week before across UK retail destinations as a whole, but there were strong rises in each of the three destination types. As is typically the case when we benefit from good weather, high streets benefited most with a week on week increase that was nearly double that in shopping centres and retail parks.”
