UK footfall falls sharply says Springboard, malls down the most

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
Nov 13, 2017

October delivered “a black trading cloud ahead of the Christmas sales storm” in terms of footfall to stores in the UK, a new report said Monday.

The monthly Springboard tracker, produced in association with the British Retail Consortium (BRC) showed a 2% year-on-year footfall drop. That may not sound too bad on the surface, but it’s the worst result for October since 2013 when it declined by 2.9%. In subsequent years, October drops ranged from only 0.2% to 0.8%.

The figures reflected what has been widely acknowledged to be a very weak month for the fashion sector. September’s cold weather had spurred stronger sales and raised hopes for the AW17 season. But a mild spell in October put the brakes on consumer enthusiasm for cold weather clothing as shoppers waited to buy their coats, knots and boots after the inevitable panic discounts started in November.

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But there’s more than just a weather effect in these figures with a mixture of factors also weighing on consumer sentiment. From inflation, to political uncertainty, and Brexit-related nervousness, physical stores are facing multiple challenges. And that’s without taking the the rapid move to online as consumers ration their store visits while buying more from their sofas.

So, let’s look closer at the figures. While that 2% drop was the worst for October in four years, although there was a worse monthly fall more recently as Brexit vote month (June 2016) fell 2.3%. The October fall came in worse than the three-month rolling average of a 1.4% drop and the 12-month average of a 0.5% fall.

The main destinations to suffer were shopping centres, which is even more bad news for fashion as that’s where many fashion stores are concentrated. They dropped 3%, much worse than the 1% fall of  year ago.

High streets suffered too with a 2% fall, and even retail parks, which have been the most buoyant destination of late, were down 0.9% in October, compared to a 1.1% increase this time last year.

And it seems the further north, the worse the performance was, with Northern Ireland and Scotland seeing particularly large footfall drops, while the East of England was the only one to see a rise (1%). Greater London did at least see slightly more people visiting its shopping centres (up a meagre 0.2%).
 
Diane Wehrle, Springboard Marketing and Insights Director said the signs of the gathering cloud have been evident in footfall trends for a while and the fact that retail park footfall slipped into negative territory after seven consecutive months of growth, “is definitive evidence of consumers tightening their purse strings.”
 
She also said a tiny improvement in the vacancy rate to 9.3%, from 9.6% last quarter, shouldn’t be taken as reason for cheer. “This is a trend that has occurred over the last few years as landlords fill empty stores with temporary lettings in the run up to Christmas,” she explained. “Indeed, as trading performance comes under increasing strain, it is likely that landlords will increasingly resort to this approach, and so we may see the vacancy rate remain at this level well into the new year.”