Footfall declined by -3.1% last week from the week before across all UK retail destinations and by -5.4% in high streets, according to retail analyts, Springboard.
In shopping centres and retail parks, where rain impacts trips to a lesser degree, footfall dropped by just -1.3% and -0.1% respectively.
In contrast, in high streets when the rain hit on Thursday and Friday footfall dropped by an average of -9.9% and even on Saturday when it was largely dry footfall remained -4.5% lower than the week before.
Footfall declined across all types of high streets, with London being the hardest hit with a drop in footfall of -9.5% in Central London and -10.1% in Greater London, whilst in market towns the drop was just -4.4% and even less at -3.2% in regional cities outside of London.
Footfall in all geographies declined apart from in Wales, where it rose by +5% overall and by +8.9% in high streets.
Diane Wehrle, Insights Director at Springboard commented: “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.”
