January footfall commentary

ATCM - Springboard
National High Street Index

It seems that the resilience of the high street, witnessed at the end of 2008, to what is now officially a recession has all but disappeared. Reinforcing the results issued by the British Retail Consortium of a 1.6% annual fall in non-food retail sales in January, the National High Street Index recorded an annual decline in footfall of 8% in our town centres - the largest annual decrease for January since the Index began in 2005, and the twice the level of decline in footfall recorded in January 2008.

Despite the gloom embracing the retail sector generally, regional cities appear to be weathering the storm better than towns and cities generally. Not only was an annual decrease in footfall of 3.6% recorded across regional cities in January - less than half of the UK national average of -8% - but this is also a significantly smaller decrease than that recorded in the same month in the previous two years.

The contrast between the performance of all towns and cities nationally and regional cities is highlighted further by examining the annual change in footfall in each week during the month: while for towns and cities nationally footfall fell annually by between 3.6% and 8.5% in each week during January; for regional cities the annual decline was less than 5% in any week of the month, and in the final week of January, footfall increased annually by 3.8%.