February 2009 footfall commentary

During periods of difficult economic trading conditions, the need for relevant indicators of performance becomes ever more apparent. And the issue of relevance is absolutely key: for a performance indicator to offer any assistance it must be reflective of trading conditions.

So it is comforting to note that, in January 2009, when the National High Street reported an annual fall in footfall of 8%, the overall increase in retail sales of 1% reported by the BRC actually disguised a 10% decline in clothing sales and a 14% decline in sales of furniture and electrical appliances¹.

In February, footfall in the UK's high streets fell by 7.8%, mirroring the 8% decline in sales for February reported by John Lewis. And yet again regional cities outperformed towns and cities generally in the UK with an annual decline in their footfall of just 0.9%.

Despite footfall declining annually in February as a whole, footfall in our high streets during the half term week increased significantly compared with the half term week in 2008: +15.9% nationally and +23.8% in regional cities. To some degree the uplift in footfall during the half term week was a product of the severe snow that fell across the UK in the previous two weeks which meant that shoppers inevitably held off making trips into town and city centres. By the half term week, the weather had cleared sufficiently to encourage shoppers back into town centres.

The point of difference between the performance of all towns and cities and of regional cities, however, is in the fact that the despite footfall increasing by 15.9% nationally in the third (half term) week of the month, this was not a sufficiently large increase to offset the decline in footfall during the first and second weeks of the month which averaged -17.7%. In contrast, in regional cities, the increase in footfall in the third week of 23.8% was more than 11% greater than the average 12.4% decline over the first and second weeks of the month.