Stores in England reopened their doors today, kick-starting the Christmas spending period after the latest lockdown, but shopper traffic was still steeply down year-on-year in key destinations.

Footfall across all shopping locations jumped 64.5% week on week this morning as lockdown regulations eased and shoppers returned to stores, according to the latest figures from monitor Springboard.

However, that was still a 24.1% decline year on year, reflecting continued reluctance among shoppers to return to their former habits as well as the shift to online that the pandemic has accelerated.

Retail parks fared best, as has been the case throughout the pandemic. Footfall was just 3.1% less than it was this time last year.

City centres remained the worst hit in terms of footfall, despite ordinarily being awash with festive shoppers.

Footfall in central London rose 59.4% compared with last week but was 65% below last year.  

The West End similarly suffered a 63.2% decline in footfall year on year, while outer London was down 23.9%. 

Carnaby Street, Regent Street and Oxford Street looked bleak this morning, with more staff than customers in most stores when Retail Week visited.

Christmas favourites Liberty and Selfridges had few customers, despite lavish window displays and special events in the latter. 

There were queues at the Apple store on Regent Street and at Uniqlo and Debenhams on Oxford Steet. Debenhams, which revealed yesterday it is is being wound down, launched a Sale on “wild Wednesday”.

After the news of Arcadia’s administration, its flagship Topshop and Topman store was also lacking customers, with Sale signs still up from its Black Friday event.

Despite the lacklustre footfall in London, retailers such as Dune and Reiss both chose reopening day to launch flagship stores in the capital, while Cath Kidston relaunched what will be its only bricks-and-mortar store after it fell into administration earlier this year.

While busier than its competitors, high street favourite Primark was relatively calm on Oxford Street compared with when stores reopened in June after the spring lockdown.

Outside London, there were queues of early-bird shoppers at Primark in cities including Birmingham and Newcastle – people started lining up from 5am this morning.

However, regional cities generally did not enjoy a strong footfall bounceback. Traffic jumped 35.2% week on week but that was still a decline of 45% compared with last year.

Smaller coastal and market towns achieved the biggest improvement in footfall compared with last week as shoppers returned to high streets – they registered 76.9% and 96.8% increases in footfall respectively.

Shopping centres also achieved a big rise in footfall week on week, jumping 100.7%. While that was 22.9% lower than the same time in 2019, it could indicate a positive few weeks for shopping centres as consumers choose indoor destinations rather than braving the cold weather. 

New West End Company chief executive Jace Tyrrell said: “Today marks the beginning of the most important three weeks for British retail in recent memory. The eight golden weeks of Christmas normally deliver £2.5bn in spend to businesses in the West End alone – this is set to be reduced to £900m this year in just three weeks.

“With just three weekends until Christmas, it’s finally time for the great British public to shop out to help out.”

Barclaycard Payments, which processes nearly £1 in every £3 spent in the UK, also reported spending off to a slow start.

As of midday today, it recorded a 16.9% decrease in the volume of payments compared to the same period on Black Friday, despite stores reopening.

Barclaycard Payments chief executive Rob Cameron said: “With physical stores only having been open for a few hours, it’s not surprising that today is tracking behind Black Friday in transactions.

“We expect the gap between Black Friday and ‘Black Wednesday’ to narrow as we continue through the day, as more shoppers hit the high streets – especially with many retailers extending their opening hours to take advantage of the new social distancing guidelines.”