New figures show footfall in town centre up 36% year on year

Footfall in Wrexham town centre is continuing to see an upward trend – however it has been acknowledged that such an increase may not always reflect in sales for traders.

The footfall data itself is provided by an electronic pedestrian / footfall tracker which was installed at the corner of Hope Street and Regent Street – between Barclays Bank and WH Smith – in 2017.

During June’s Town Centre Forum is was explained that although a second footfall counter is running on High Street and has been collating data since April 2018, as a year of data is not yet collected no comparisons are being made.

The busiest day in April 2018 was Saturday 28th with 32,303 visitors recorded – which coincided with events in town and the last Wrexham home game of the season against AFC Fylde. Data shows the peak hour of the month was midday on the same Saturday, which was half an hour before the earlier kick off.

Overall the weekly average for April was 83,652 visitors, with figures stating this is an increase of 36.6 per cent on the 61,252 weekly visitors for the same period in 2017.

Despite questions previously being raised over the data collection, the year on year comparison on the same methodology does show an increase regardless on thoughts over the firmness of either sets of figures.

A second footfall counter has also been added onto the High Street, providing an average visitor figure amount of 53,800 for that area in April 2018.

As a result of the introduction of the second counter the weekly footfall for April has seen a surge of between 102 per cent and 156 per cent during April; with figures in the high 130,000s – 140,000 compared to the low 60,000s of 2017.

Overall the data for April lists the overall monthly footfall as being 549,810 for the town.

With lots of information being provided in black and white printed versions of colour coded digital reports – we think the data appears to have been worked out by the weekly averages for Hope Street and High street being added together and multiplied by four. In this case the average for the two counters is 137,452.

Similar data is also provided for the period between April 29th 2018 and 26th May 2018, showing the monthly footfall total as 555,738.

As with April’s figures the data for May shows an increase on the previous year’s footfall, which has grown by 35.5 per cent to 86,735 on Hope Street. A total of 52,181 was recorded on High Street – a slight decrease on the previous month.

The busiest day of the month was Saturday 12th May, which coincided with the final day of FOCUS Wales.

During last week’s Town Centre Forum it was noted that while there are “big increases” in terms of footfall, ‘work needs to be done’ with traders to see if the rise in visitor figures is resulting in more sales, and if not, why not.