UK high streets suffer as Covid concerns grow

UK high streets saw footfall decline by -2.6% over pre-Christmas weekend, according to the latest figures from Springboard.

Although footfall across UK retail destinations rose by 5.5% last week from the week before, it ended with a disappointing performance, felt especially by large city centres, with footfall over the weekend declining by -8.5% in Central London and by -6.4% in cities outside of the capital.

The week’s footfall increase dropped sharply from Tuesday when footfall rose by 15.6% (in response to a decline of -11.1% on the previous Tuesday) to just 2.6% on Friday.

Meanwhile, over the weekend footfall rose by only 0.8% on Saturday and dropped by -1.4% on Sunday.

In contrast, the footfall in market towns was up by 3.4% and Springboard added “the picture in shopping centres was a little more positive”, with a rise of 0.5% over the weekend. Yet retail parks were by far the most popular of the three destination types with a rise in footfall of 4.7%.

Footfall ended -19.1% lower than in the same week in 2019 (worsening from -17.7% in the week before). However, in contrast with 2020 the picture improved with footfall last week +22.5% higher than in the same week last year compared with +18.1% higher in the week before.

Diane Wehrle, Insights Director at Springboard said: “Despite the introduction of Plan B guidance to work from home and the significant rise in Covid infections, footfall rose last week across UK retail destinations.

“However, the growing nervousness of consumers meant that increases dwindled with each day that passed, and by Friday the uplift in footfall was around just a quarter of that on Wednesday.”

She added: “This provided a forewarning for subdued performance of bricks and mortar stores and destinations over the weekend which, whilst regarded as the peak shopping weekend of the year, is exactly what occurred. Indeed on Saturday footfall increased only very marginally from the week before, and on Sunday it was lower than the week before.

“The nervousness of shoppers about making in-person shopping visits inevitably meant that large city centres lost out to smaller high streets, particularly over the weekend when footfall declined from the week before in Central London and large cities outside of the capital whilst rising in market towns.”