Footfall drops to seven-year low for June prompting fears UK economy is at a standstill
Shoppers deserted UK high streets during June as the washout weather and continuing Brexit uncertainty helped drive store visits down to a seven-year low for the month.
The “summer slump” took a particularly heavy toll on high streets, with shopping centres also badly affected, according to the British Retail Consortium’s (BRC) monthly footfall tracker for the period from 26 May to 29 June.
The data will fuel fears that Britain’s economy has come to a standstill, with fears of a no-deal Brexit prompting consumers to sit on their hands and put off non-essential purchases.
Footfall across shopping areas fell by 2.9% during the period, up from a 0.9% decline in the same month last year.
That is the lowest June figure recorded since 2012, the second consecutive month where every UK region recorded a decline in footfall.
High streets were worst hit, with visits sliding by 4.5%, compared with a 0.1% rise in June 2018, when the World Cup and sunny weather prompted many people to snap up barbecues, garden items and impulse purchases.
Shopping centres also recorded significantly fewer visits, as footfall fell 2.4% for the month. Retail parks appeared to buck the gloomy trend, however, with 0.1% more visitors than the previous June.
The BRC chief executive, Helen Dickinson, said the figures amounted to a “summer slump”, adding: “Poor footfall this June led to a significant fall in the sales figures for the month … Last year’s World Cup and glorious sunshine set a high bar which 2019’s slow consumer spending and Brexit uncertainty failed to live up to.”
However, June’s decline represents a month-on-month improvement on May’s figures, which recorded footfall down 3.5% on the same month in 2018 – the worst figure recorded since January 2013.
Diane Wehrle, Springboard’s marketing and insights director, said that while the numbers were disappointing, given the “exceptional and ongoing disruptive political and economic period” the UK was facing, coupled with the turmoil in the retail sector, “we might actually expect consumer activity to have taken an even greater hit”.
The BRC revealed last week that retail sales in June fell by their biggest margin since records began in the mid-1990s, prompting it to declare that clarity over Brexit was desperately needed because the continued risk of a no-deal outcome was damaging consumer confidence and forcing retailers to spend hundreds of millions of pounds on measures to minimise the impact.
Meanwhile, the Office for National Statistics reported that UK GDP rose by 0.3% in May from a month earlier, although some economists claimed Britain remained on the cusp of its first quarterly contraction since 2012.