Springboard reports a decline in pedestrian traffic
The negative 2 per cent drop in footfall in February – a significant worsening from -0.5 per cent in February 2018 – occurred despite the fact that February this year was the hottest on record. However, the record temperatures only occurred in the final week of the month when footfall rose by +2.5 per cent compared with drops in each of the preceding three weeks, averaging -3.6 per cent.
Footfall declined in all but one geography and in all but two areas the drop was greater than -2 per cent with a fall of just -1.4 per cent in Greater London. The result for London will in part have been due to Chinese New Year occurring in February this year, but it is actually not an unusual outcome as footfall in Greater London is generally the last to decline and the first to recover due to the diversity of its economy and sheer volume of activity.
