Millions of shoppers hit Britain’s high streets last week, boosting footfall by an average of 20 per cent on the previous week according to retail analyst, Springboard.
The Centre for Retail Research said an estimated £4.5billion spent over the past weekend was in line with 2019 figures. Data showed sales were generated from £2.5billion in shops, £1.5billion online, £150million in pubs and £400million in restaurants, retail and hospitality.
The biggest upswing was seen at shopping centres, where footfall was up even further at 26.3 per cent. Retail parks were also well attended, with footfall up on the previous week, albeit 8.6 per cent lower than 2019 levels.
Concerns about possible food shortages and rumours of another series of tier 3 lockdowns – which have since come true for some parts of the country – helped fuel the rise in shopping last week.
It was confirmed today that millions of Londoners are to be put back into a Tier 3 shutdown in this final ten days before Christmas, meaning that pubs, restaurants and cultural venues will all be forced to close at what should be one of their busiest times of year.
Health Secretary, Matt Hancock, said in a speech in the House of Commons that the new rules will come into play in less than 48 hours time, just after midnight on Wednesday December 16. Many MPs opposed the move, fearing it will devastate businesses and negate any of the gains made when lockdown ended.
The insights director of Springboard, Diane Wehrle, said: ‘In the second week following the reopening of non-essential retail stores footfall across UK retail destinations continued to rise. The uplift was smaller than in the first week, but it was still significantly greater than in the second week following the reopening of retail in June, indicating the desire of shoppers to visit brick and mortar stores in the run-up to Christmas.’
For the past week national media has been reporting on crowds of shoppers at prime retail destinations such as London’s Oxford Street and Regent Street, which have been pedestrianised to aid social distancing. Similar crowded streets were to be seen in Newcastle, where shoppers braved rotten weather to support their town centre shops and markets. Over in Manchester, another Tier Three area, the shopping centre was described as ‘close to its bustling normal’.
Smaller market towns also saw a 20.9% boost in footfall, although this was lower than regional cities, up 29.7% between Sunday December 6 and Saturday December 12.
During the same week in 2019, footfall fell across many key shopping destinations because it followed Black Friday sales, which tends to have a ‘cooling off’ period immediately afterwards.
After so much time lockdown and with furlough money to spend, shoppers this year appear to support bricks and mortar stores in the run-up to Christmas, even though overall numbers remain down because of the various covid-related restrictions.
Springboard said that, over the past two weeks, footfall was 29.9% lower than in 2019 across all destinations, and in high street and shopping centres it was off by 38.1% and 33.2% respectively.
