While not all cities have had a prosperous summer, most places are on a clear track to recovery, says Analyst Valentine Quinio.
Let’s start with the good news: the progressive reopening of the economy, which culminated on ‘Freedom Day’ when most restrictions were lifted, has triggered a visible and welcome boost in city centre activity up and down the country. Average footfall levels reached halfway recovery (compared to their pre-pandemic levels) in the immediate week after ‘Freedom day’, and crept up throughout August. Footfall levels went up in all 63 city centres between July and August, and by the last week of August, they had recovered by two-thirds on average.
This Freedom Day boost is also a vaccine-driven boost. Of all 63 cities, 47 saw their activity peak on the last week of August, meaning it was the highest it’s been since the pandemic started. Comparing this month’s data to last summer’s shows this pretty clearly (Figure 1).
Source: Locomizer, 2021
Night-time footfall, for example, was higher everywhere in August this year (with the exception of one city, Luton) than in August 2020. This is perhaps unsurprising given that a number of businesses that had been shut so far, like night-clubs, reopened this year; but still quite remarkable considering that last summer, the Eat Out to Help Out voucher scheme had already prompted a surge in footfall in some places. Take Blackpool for instance: the average night-time recovery was 50 percentage points higher this year than in 2020; in Bournemouth, Southend, Sunderland or Leicester, it was more than 20 percentage points higher.
Cultural events, like festivals, have clearly helped attract people back in city centres. This is visible in the data: the Edinburgh Fringe festival, as well as Reading festival generated a significant boost in footfall (respectively up 27 percentage points and 40 percentage points compared to the last week of July).
More generally, activity has bounced back the most on weekends across a number of places. This explains why the patterns we’ve observed in the past 18 months still hold true so far: that smaller and medium-sized cities, particularly seaside and tourist hubs have fared quite well.
A total of 11 cities are now above their pre-pandemic weekend footfall levels (against only three at the end of July). Blackpool, Southend, Brighton, Bournemouth, York are among them. All have benefitted from summer weather and inflows of domestic tourists for who opted for a ‘staycation’ this summer, rather than a holiday in Spain or Greece. In Blackpool, nearly 70 per cent of city centre visitors came from elsewhere in the UK; it was 62 per cent in York, and 54 per cent in Bournemouth (Figure 2)
Source: Locomizer, 2021.
It is not all bleak: London, for instance, experienced a noticeable 16 percentage point increase in its weekend activity. Data shows that the share of people coming from outside the city is actually getting closer to its pre-pandemic split (albeit much lower than in Blackpool) suggesting that domestic tourism has, even to a small extent, partly compensated for the absence of international visitors.
But that’s only one part of the story. Although the share is similar, the total number of people who are back (both on weekdays and weekend) is still far below what it was pre-pandemic, which explains why the capital is still the slowest city to recover. And bridging that gap will not come from weekend visitors, but from workers, who, at least up until the end of August, were still reluctant to return to the office. This might be changing as you’re reading these lines, as people may have decided to go back in September. The next release of the High Street Recovery Tracker will give us further insights.
All in all, as summer ends, the picture is broadly positive, especially in light of what the past eighteen months have been. But it is still quite contrasted, and for most cities, uncertain. The challenges they now face vary from place to place: seaside resorts and tourist hubs will need to adapt to the departure of visitors, and many of them will have to address the struggles their high streets already faced pre-pandemic. In larger, more successful cities, the stability of the recovery will depend on whether or not people go back to the office. If the hybrid model becomes the norm, then city centre businesses will have to adapt to a permanently reduced number of customers- and perhaps become less dependent on the ‘sandwich economy’.
Explore the changing levels of activity within the high streets of Britain's cities and large towns from February 2020 to May 2022.
Analyst Valentine Quinio explores the latest high street spend and footfall data to establish what impact England’s ‘Freedom Day’ had on consumer behaviour, and what this means for high street recovery.
The latest update of the High Streets Recovery Tracker includes footfall and spend data until the end of June and reveals the recovery has lost momentum.
Analyst Valentine Quinio discusses the challenges faced by our high streets and city centres, and how the levelling up agenda should support them.
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