In October, the UK experienced its first year-on-year drop in footfall levels since the pandemic began, signaling a challenging start to the holiday shopping season. Consumer spending remained subdued due to rising living costs, resulting in a 1.3% decrease in footfall compared to October 2022. This decline, the first since April 2021, raises concerns about holiday spending and beyond. These figures come from retail experts MRI Software (formerly MRI Springboard).
Furthermore, October marked the fifth consecutive month of year-on-year footfall declines when compared to 2022 levels. High streets saw a 2% decrease, shopping centers were down by 1.8%, while retail parks were the only destination to show a marginal annual increase of 0.8%.
Looking at month-on-month data, shopping centers and retail parks demonstrated more resilience in October, with footfall increasing by 0.9% and 0.5%, respectively, while high streets experienced a 1.1% decline. Overall, footfall across all retail destinations decreased by 0.2% from September to October, continuing the trend seen from August to September, where a 2.8% decrease was recorded.
The final week of October provided some relief, with footfall increasing by 9% compared to the previous week, which saw an average 2.1% decline in the preceding three weeks. However, the gap from pre-pandemic footfall levels only slightly narrowed to -10.8% in October from -10.9% in September, driven by an improvement in high streets to -11.9%. Shopping centers and retail parks, on the other hand, saw a widening gap of -15.7% and -3.1%, respectively.