Crawley makes UK top 10 for busiest towns and cities for footfall

New research, from mobility research business Huq, has highlighted the UK’s ten busiest towns and cities for both footfall and in-store retail in the week since non-essential stores reopened on Monday April 12. Results include the first available data for the first post lockdown shopping Saturday, April 12.

Crawley shoppers hit the high street as businesses reopen - picture special

Crawley has seen an uptick of 58.3% in footfall since restrictions eased at the beginning of last week, placing it third in the UK.

The research is unique from other data in that it differentiates footfall from visitors in-store and is drawn from real-time population mobility data, comprised of 1bn+ mobile geo-location data-points daily.

Please find the full results here.

Chelmsford tops the list for footfall with an increase of 71.9% over the past week, but Exeter has seen the greatest rise in people actually going into non-essential stores, with more than three times as many store visits (up 227.3%).

While the South of England dominated the increase in footfall on high streets, cities from around the country saw an increase in people visiting non-essential stores, with Ipswich (up 183.3%), Nottingham (up 170.6%) and Manchester (up 137%) all appearing in the top ten.

The top ten towns for increasing footfall over the past week are as follows:

Chelmsford 71.9%

Bracknell 70.4%

Crawley 58.8%

Maidstone 58.2%

Basildon 49.2%

Solihull 48.3%

Bath 47.2%

Carlisle 46.7%

Southampton 46.4%

Birkenhead 46.1%

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