THE high street in York is struggling to emerge from lockdown.

According to the latest visitor footfall data from Centre for Cities’ High Street Recovery Tracker Centre the city is struggling to recover post lockdown and is ninth in the top ten worst hit cities. 

The data compares visitor footfall for the week of June 15 when non-essential shops re-opened with the previous week and shows that London, Manchester, Nottingham, Newcastle and Liverpool are also among the cities that have seen some of the smallest bounces in footfall since non-essential shops opened.

But York Retail Forum Chairman, Phil Pinder, said that, though visitor numbers are low, local footfall is strong and the amount people are spending is high.

Mr Pinder said: "These stats only look at footfall and are relying on data from cameras in York that are still broken. The tourists obviously have not come back to York yet, but I would say local footfall is up and most peoples' basket spend is hugely up."

Centre for Cities’ say this reinforces their concerns about the future of local services such as shops and restaurants in larger city centres if significant numbers of office workers continue to work from home.

English cities and large towns that have seen the SMALLEST increase in high street footfall since non-essential shops opened:

1 Aldershot

2 Birkenhead

3 London

4 Slough

5 Sheffield

6 Manchester

7 Nottingham

8 Luton

9 York

10 Newcastle

The data shows that places like Warrington, Hull and Bournemouth have seen faster recoveries in footfall over the course of June. In Bournemouth, the recovery in footfall is also likely to be helped by good weather and people going to the beach.

The faster recovery that smaller cities are seeing is likely to be due to the concentration of shops and jobs in a single city centre, unlike in places such as London or Manchester, where multiple neighbourhood hubs are spread across the city-region.

English cities and large towns that have seen the LARGEST increase in high street footfall since non-essential shops opened.

1 Warrington

2 Hull

3 Telford

4 Bournemouth

5 Sunderland

6 Burnley

7 Milton Keynes

8 Middlesbrough

9 Bradford

10 Norwich