UK footfall continues to rise, but bad weather suppresses activity

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
Feb 1, 2021

A week after specialist tracking firm Springboard had said there were signs of lockdown fatigue driving footfall higher, the company announced the latest week’s figures and they showed that footfall has risen once again, although bad weather kept the rise to only 0.4% week-on-week.

In the seven days to January 30, retail parks saw their footfall rising 4.7% and shopping centres by 1.1%, although high streets were down 2%. 

Compared to this time last year, footfall was down 65.2%.

Ads

It’s interesting that between Monday and Friday, overall footfall increased from the previous week in all three destination types, rising by an average of 4.9%. But the rises weren’t spread evenly across the country as Greater London dropped 4.3% while Northern Ireland was up 7.3%.

Central London remained the biggest sufferer across the full seven days as its footfall dropped 10% on the week and a devastating 88.3% compared to the same week last year.

Diane Wehrle, Insights Director at Springboard said that the fairly muted rise this time doesn’t mean that lockdown fatigue is a myth and blamed the weather for suppressing shopper interest. She also said that at the end of what was the fifth week of Lockdown 3, “footfall was at a noticeably higher level than in the same week during Lockdown 1, with the largest differential being in retail parks.”