Using ‘time of day’ mobility data to analyse local high street performance: The impact of pandemic trends on rural and urban high streets

Huq’s new Local High Streets Report uses mobility data insights to show whether people changed the way they used their local high streets during the Covid-19 pandemic. The data-rich evidence helps local councils to measure the performance of their town centres and make informed decisions on how to support future performance.

You can download a full copy of the Report here, including details of the sources and methodology. In this final blog of our series highlighting aspects of the Report, we see how measuring the time of day when people use the high street can allow you to monitor trends.

To explore Huq’s unique insights into pandemic trends and their impact on the future of local high streets, download the full Local High Streets Report 2022.

Hourly footfall mobility data gives actionable insights

The CommunityVision^® footfall module monitors unique visits to your chosen places and can be filtered by time of day. Using historical data for 2019, Huq’s Local High Streets Report compares pre-pandemic footfall to 2021 figures, allowing us to see clear changes.

Peak footfall on local high streets has shifted

The chart shows that peak footfall has moved towards the evening, with 5pm and 6pm now the busiest times across all place types and locations. There is a corresponding fall in footfall rates during the late night / early morning hours.

Further mobility insights give greater detail

Huq’s Report goes on to look at whether this change in the shape of the day is reflected across the different urban and rural areas included in its sample, and whether it matters where you are in the country.

For example, filtering the data according to geographic location shows clear differences in the shape of footfall during the morning commute.

London and the East of England show distinctive morning and evening rush hour peaks. Yorkshire, the West Midlands and to a lesser extent the North West regions show very little, or reduced, morning rush. This indicates that the return to pre-pandemic commuter behaviour is lagging across these regions.

Working patterns are changing

Download the full Local High Streets Report to read why Huq believes that working patterns are changing. Using a mix of mobility insight modules from CommunityVision^®, the Report identifies trends and demonstrates how useful mobility data can be in planning the future of local high streets.