Back to school sales fail to reignite footfall, finds Springboard
In what is traditionally a peak week in the school holidays in the lead up to the bank holiday weekend, footfall saw an increase of +0.7 per cent on the previous week. However, this contrasts with the drop in numbers against last year of -1.8 per cent, a worsening upon the annual drop of -1.4 per cent last year and the -1.0 per cent decline in 2016.
High street footfall worsened noticeably, moving downward from -1.9 per cent last year to -2.8 per cent, a trend of weakening following an annual change of +1.2 per cent for high streets in 2016. Retail park and shopping centre remained on par with the results of 2017, with retail parks increasing +0.5 per cent against last year, the same result as 2017 and shopping centres falling -2.0 per cent, a marginal change on the -18. per cent of 2017.
The growth against last year spread across the country ranging from +4.6 per cent in Northern Ireland to +0.9 per cent in Greater London with just Scotland experiencing a dip of -2.5 per cent. However, despite some growth for individual location types such as +4.9 per cent in retail parks in the East and +1.4 per cent in shopping centres in Scotland, the worsening in numbers overall led to all areas of the country seeing a drop for the week against last year. This was led by the latter half of the week, which saw numbers tumble from Wednesday onwards following a period of growth Sunday to Tuesday, on average -4.7 per cent in contrast to an increase of +1.2 per cent.
