New figures: footfall picks up in run-up to Christmas
New figures have shown that UK footfall has slowly picked up in the run-up to Christmas.
According to the latest data from Springboard, footfall in the week commencing 4 December saw an uplift of 1.8% on the previous week. Despite only two full trading weeks left until Christmas, this was not enough to translate into an annual increase, with numbers overall dropping by 1.5% against 2016.
However, Springboard found that the result was an improvement upon the annual decline last year of 2.5% and disguises the pockets of growth across the country.
High streets saw the biggest weekly increase with a rise of 3.1%. Meanwhile, footfall in shopping centres rose by 1.9%. Neither location saw an annual increase, with each declining by 2% and 2.1% respectively.
Diane Wehrle, retail insights specialist at Springboard, said: “Retail parks with their more targeted retail mix and convenience of location, continue to subvert the trend, dropping 1.4% against the previous week but sustaining an annual increase of 0.5%. This is likely to be due to retail parks acting as a hub for Black Friday Sales click and collections.”
