New Centre for Cities high streets recovery data published

Centre for Cities has published the latest update to its High Streets Recovery Tracker, covering September 2021. We have data for the 63 largest cities and towns in the UK.

The tracker can be found here.

Here are some embargoed topline trends from this month’s update:

Changes in footfall in September

• Overall footfall continued to rise in the centres of the 63 largest cities and towns in the UK in September, the average rise was 8 percentage points.
• The biggest increases in footfall were seen in Sheffield, Nottingham and Chatham.
• However, ten large city and town centres recorded falls in footfall. The three places recording the largest drops in footfall were seaside resorts: Blackpool, Bournemouth and Southend.
• Overall weekday footfall – an indicator of workers back in the office – rose from 60% of pre-pandemic levels at the end of August to 67% by the end of September – a 7 percentage point increase.

Cities with the largest increase in footfall in September
Rank	City	Change in footfall (percentage point)	Overall footfall level as of the last week of September (percentage of pre-pandemic average)
1	Sheffield	33	89
2	Nottingham	32	88
3	Chatham	26	101
4	Huddersfield	20	86
5	Bristol	20	81

Cities with the decrease in footfall in September
Rank	City	Change in footfall (percentage point)	Overall footfall level as of the last week of September (percentage of pre-pandemic average)
1	Blackpool	-37	123
2	Bournemouth	-29	94
3	Southend	-26	97
4	Reading	-23	72
5	Edinburgh	-14	80

Footfall as of the end of September

• Overall, footfall had returned to pre-pandemic levels in six of the 63 large cities and town centres studied by the end of September: Blackpool, Swansea, Burnley, Chatham, Sunderland and Dundee.
• Overall footfall remains lowest in London, at 49% of pre-pandemic levels it is now the only large city or town in the country where city centre footfall is not yet at half of pre-Covid levels. It’s weekday footfall – an indicator of workers back in the office – also remains the lowest in the UK, at 44% of pre-pandemic levels.
• On average, weekday footfall at the end of September was 67% of pre-pandemic levels, with two places – Burnley and Chatham – back to pre-pandemic weekday footfall levels.

Cities with the highest overall footfall as of the end of September
Rank	City	Overall footfall level as of the last week of September (percentage of pre-pandemic average)
1	Blackpool	123
2	Swansea	104
3	Burnley	104
4	Chatham	101
5	Sunderland	100

Cities with the lowest overall footfall as of the end of September
Rank	City	Overall footfall level as of the last week of September (percentage of pre-pandemic average)
1	London	49
2	Milton Keynes	66
3	Oxford	67
4	Luton	68
5	Slough	69