Curfew and poor weather leads to second week of footfall decline

Overall, retail footfall across all destinations is 31.4% lower than last year

Footfall has declined by 3.5% in the latest figures, and is attributed to both the 10pm curfew and heavy rainfall. 

According to retail experts Springboard, excessive rain from Wednesday onwards hit shopping patterns.  

Sunday and Tuesday saw an average rise of 1.1% in footfall, tailing off during each day of rain with falls of 7.1%. Shopping centres however remained relatively flat throughout the week whilst retail parks grew a marginal 0.8%.

Although footfall decline was mainly in high streets, the biggest drop was in coastal towns where footfall fell by 11.6%. Regional cities were also hit with an 8.2% decline from the previous week. 

The introduction of a 10pm curfew by the government under coronavirus restrictions impacted activity in retail destinations, where footfall fell 2.9% from 7am-7pm. 

Overall, retail footfall across all destinations is 31.4% lower than last year. Even out-of-town retail parks, which traditionally perform better than high streets, have shown an 11.8% drop compared with 2019. 

High streets themselves have dropped 39.4% during the same period. Shopping centres, which appeared flat in the previous week, have suffered a 33.7% drop from last year.

Diane Wehrle, insight director at Springboard, said: “For the second consecutive week, and only the third week since the beginning of May, footfall across retail destinations declined last week from the week before.

“Part of the cause of the decline, particularly in high streets, was the rainy weather during the second half of the week that led to a double digit drop in footfall on both Friday and Saturday. However, the 10pm curfew is clearly having an impact.”

She added: “Whilst shopping centres and retail parks with only minimal evening economy activity are holding their own, high streets – where the majority of evening economy activity occurs – are feeling the effect.

“[The] drop in footfall post 7pm is twice as great as that during working hours, and four times as great post 11pm. Inevitably the gap in activity from last year widened further, particularly in high streets, where footfall is now more than a third lower than it was in 2019.”