Footfall in out-of-town locations has continued to rise, with a 1.9% year-on-year increase in the UK.

Despite these encouraging figures, footfall in shopping centres saw a 1.9% decline compared to October 2013.

Scotland reported the greatest rise in regional footfall, up 0.5% year-on-year.

These figures come from British Retail Consortium/Springboard’s retail footfall monitor, which records more than 60m footfall counts per week at over 600 counting locations. 

Diane Wehrle, retail insights director at Springboard, said: ‘’The positive performance of Scotland’s retail locations continued in October, with an increase in footfall for the fourth month in row.

“Even more encouraging was that, in contrast with the UK, footfall in Scottish high streets increased by 0.5%, with only shopping centres seeing a drop over the year from October 2013. Even retail parks, where footfall rose by 1.9% across the UK, recorded a higher increase of 3.4% in Scotland.

‘’So it seems retail locations in Scotland are exhibiting a far greater degree of resilience than those across the UK as a whole, and this is reflected in its vacancy rate of 9%, which is noticeably lower than the average of 10.3% across the UK.”

Four regions in England reported footfall above the UK average of -0.9%. These were the East Midlands (2.0%), South East (1.5%), East (0.8%) and North and Yorkshire (0.5%).