Retail footfall hit by rain and Government announcement last week
New figures have revealed that footfall edged down 3.1% across all UK retail destinations last week from the previous seven day period as rain deterred people from going out shopping later in the week.
The data from retail specialist Springboard shows that high streets saw a 5.4% fall while shopping centres and retail parks experienced respective drops of 1.3% and 0.1%.
Footfall declined across all types of high streets with Central London being one of the hardest hit with a drop of 9.5%, In contrast, the number of shoppers visiting market towns and regional cities fell by 4.4% and 3.2% respectively.
Diane Wehrle, insights director at Springboard, said: “The news announced last Monday that regulations will not be eased for another month seems to have acted as a dampener on consumer activity last week, with footfall across UK retail destinations lower than the week before for the second consecutive week despite hot and sunny weather in the first half of the week.
“For most of the UK rain dominated the last few days from Thursday onwards, which inevitably impacted high streets most heavily of the three destination types; here the drop in footfall between Thursday and Saturday was more than twice that between the previous days.”
The week on week decline meant that the gap in footfall from 2019 widened to a 22.8% decline across all retail destinations from 18.4% in the week before.
Photo by Georgia Hawkins
