Footfall drops 3.1% following gov announcement

Footfall dropped 3.1% last week following the government’s announcement that the lifting of restrictions will be delayed until 19 July, according to the latest figures from Springboard.

For the week beginning 14 June, footfall declined across all types of high streets across the country, with London being the hardest hit with a drop of 9.5% in Central London.

This represents the second consecutive week-on-week decline, resulting in the gap in footfall from 2019 again falling 22.8% across all retail destinations from a drop of 18.4% the week before.

However, in comparison, footfall across retail parks and shopping centres only fell by 0.1% and 1.3%, 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.”