Springboard records rise in pedestrian traffic
The sunshine of last week saw an increase in footfall of +4.1% following the bluster of Storm Gareth the previous week. Annually, for the Springboard Index, numbers declined marginally, dipping -0.2% against last year. This is, however, a significant improvement upon the -6.6% decline of last year, when the last vestiges of snow combined with consumers holding out for Easter to bring footfall down across every location type.
The recovery from last year’s results lies only with high streets, recording an increase of +1.5% (vs -6.4% in 2018), with the key shopping days of Sunday, Monday and Saturday experiencing the most significant increases. But while high street footfall has recovered, retail parks and shopping centres have not, with declines of -1.3% and -2.7% respectively, compared to results of -5.6% and -7.9% in 2018, with all but just one region per location type subverting this trend.
Retail park visitor numbers also dropped slightly against the previous week, falling by -0.2, while High Streets saw the largest uplift, rising +7.2%. Regionally, the combined strength of the increases of high street and shopping centre footfall resulted in a weekly uplift across all parts of the country.
