SCOTTISH RETAIL FOOTFALL COULD BE SLOWLY IMPROVING

Scottish footfall decreased by 16.2% in January, compared with two years earlier. However that is a 6.6% improvement on December.

The latest Scottish Retail Consortium (SRC) and Sensormatic IQ data also showed that shopping centre footfall fell by 36.6% in January across Scotland, down from a decline of 31.9% in December.

In January, footfall in Glasgow decreased by 17.6% on a year-on-two-year basis – although again, this was a 4.2% improvement on December.

SRC director David Lonsdale said: “visits to Scotland’s retail destinations finally saw a slight improvement, with January showing the least-worst footfall figures witnessed since the onset of the Covid crisis 22 months ago.

Footfall was down by a sixth on pre-pandemic levels demonstrating there is still a long way to go before any return to normal trading.”

He pointed out that the upturn wasn’t felt across all retail destinations though, with shopping centres faring particularly poorly in January.

Lonsdale noted that shopping centres are often disproportionally geared towards fashion, which would have felt the impact of public health instructions to shun socialising.