UK shopper footfall fell 4.7% year on year in October, according to BRC-Sensormatic data published on Friday 6 November, the steepest decline since April and a clear worsening from September’s 2.9% fall. High streets took the heaviest blow, with visits down 5.2%, after Storm Austen and Storm Boelo struck within days of each other late in the month.
Weather explains part of that, but not all of it. The figures also landed one day after the Bank of England raised interest rates to 4%, and two weeks after a sharp drop in consumer confidence, so the real question for shops and shoppers is how much of October’s lost traffic comes back before Black Friday on 27 November.
In short
- The headline: total UK footfall fell 4.7% in the four weeks from 4 to 31 October, against a 2.9% fall in September and a 0.7% fall in October 2025.
- Worst location: high streets fell 5.2%, shopping centres 4.1% and retail parks 3.6%. A year earlier, high streets were the only location type in growth.
- Worst nation: Wales fell 6.3%, followed by England at 4.6%, Scotland at 4.3% and Northern Ireland at 3.1%. Glasgow fell 8.2%, while Edinburgh fell only 1.4%.
- Storms were not the only cause: the Scottish Retail Consortium says foot traffic showed little sign of improvement even earlier in the month, and September was weak in mild weather.
- Next test: Sensormatic expects Saturday 28 November to be the busiest store day of the peak, ahead of Boxing Day and Super Saturday on 19 December.
What did the October footfall figures show?
The BRC-Sensormatic monitor counts visits to shopping destinations across the UK, and it compares each period with the same period a year earlier. The October edition covers the four weeks from 4 to 31 October 2026, according to the Scottish Retail Consortium’s release. The 2025 comparison period ran from 5 October to 1 November 2025, so both windows include Halloween.
Total footfall fell 4.7%, the BRC’s release shows, as carried by Big Furniture Group and by agency copy in Nation.Cymru. All three location types fell further than in September, and every nation recorded a decline. Andy Sumpter, head of consulting and analytics for EMEA at Sensormatic, described it as the steepest decline recorded since April.
Helen Dickinson, chief executive of the British Retail Consortium, said: “Footfall fell sharply in every part of the UK in October.” She said low consumer confidence was “likely a key factor” as households dealt with rising inflation and high energy costs, and that stormy weather led many consumers “to stay home or use locations with easy parking options”.
| Location type | October 2026 | September 2026 | October 2025 | Change, Sept to Oct 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Total UK | -4.7% | -2.9% | -0.7% | 1.8 points worse |
| High streets | -5.2% | -3.0% | +0.6% | 2.2 points worse |
| Shopping centres | -4.1% | -3.5% | -0.9% | 0.6 points worse |
| Retail parks | -3.6% | -1.7% | -0.5% | 1.9 points worse |
Sources: BRC-Sensormatic releases for October 2026, September 2026 and October 2025. All figures are year on year. The final column is shopappy’s arithmetic.
One line in the published commentary does not sit easily with that table. In the release as carried by Big Furniture Group, Sumpter says shopping centres provided the month’s “sole positive headline”, with visits up “a marginal +0.1%”. The same release gives shopping centres as down 4.1% year on year, so the 0.1% appears to be a different measure. The full monitor is restricted to BRC members and the published text does not say which comparison it uses, so we have relied on the 4.1% fall.
How badly did storms Austen and Boelo hit the shops?
Storm Austen reached the UK on Friday 23 October, with Storm Boelo following over the weekend of 24 and 25 October. The BBC reported gusts of 85mph from Boelo, and the Met Office issued amber warnings during the sequence. LBC reported that two people were killed by falling trees.
The disruption went well beyond the wind itself. The Energy Networks Association said on Monday 26 October that around 785,000 customers had been reconnected after outages, according to LBC, with around 36,000 still waiting that morning. Flights and ferries were disrupted, and public events including London’s Diwali on the Square and Liverpool’s River of Light were reported as cancelled.
For retail, the timing was poor. A storm on a weekday costs some visits, but a storm across a Friday, Saturday and Sunday lands on the days when discretionary shopping trips are most likely. In Scotland, Sumpter said footfall declined by more than 7% in the most heavily affected weeks, “as many consumers chose to stay closer to home rather than make discretionary shopping trips”.
Why high streets lost more than retail parks
Dickinson’s explanation centres on access. In bad weather, a retail park with a large car park next to the door is a much easier trip than a walk between shops on an exposed street, particularly when trains and buses are disrupted. That fits a gap of 1.6 percentage points between high streets and retail parks in October.
It is not a new pattern this year. In June, when a record heatwave kept people at home, high street footfall fell 6.2% while retail parks fell only 0.3%, and coverage at the time described enclosed centres and parks as more resilient. Whether the problem is heat or wind, the open high street has been the location most exposed to extremes in 2026.
The Halloween figure that flatters the month
Sensormatic reported on 2 November that footfall on Halloween itself rose 29% year on year, with high street traffic up 13% week on week. InternetRetailing and Retail Times both carried those numbers. Retail parks rose 32% on the day, high streets 30% and shopping centres 26%.
Those figures need some care. Sumpter noted that Halloween fell on a Saturday this year, which helped, whereas in 2025 it fell on a Friday. A week-on-week comparison for that Saturday also implies a base of Saturday 24 October, when Storm Boelo was arriving, so a 13% rise looks more like a modest recovery than a surge. A single good Saturday did not stop the month as a whole from falling 4.7%, and Sumpter’s own verdict was that “beyond that, retailers found little to celebrate”.
Is the weather really to blame?
Only partly, and the retail bodies themselves say so. The best evidence is what happened before the storms arrived.
September was not a storm month. Sumpter said at the time that temperatures stayed above seasonal norms and that “retailers cannot attribute this month’s performance to the weather”, pointing instead to inflation, household spending pressures, fuel costs and uncertainty before the Budget. Footfall still fell 2.9% that month, which sets a floor well below zero before any wind or rain is added.
David Lonsdale, director of the Scottish Retail Consortium, made the same point about October. He said footfall “plunged in the second half of October”, but added that “foot-traffic showed little sign of improvement even earlier in the month”, which he linked to an economy and households under pressure from the energy crisis in the Middle East, felt at the petrol pump and in rising electricity bills.
What the wider economic data says
The backdrop deteriorated sharply during the month. GfK’s consumer confidence index fell 11 points to -24 in October, with its major purchase index down 14 points to -22, as we reported alongside the ONS retail sales fall for September. Neil Bellamy of GfK cited relentless cost-of-living pressures and inflation at 3.5%.
Then, on Thursday 5 November, the Bank of England raised rates from 3.75% to 4%, the first rise in more than three years, the BBC reports. Governor Andrew Bailey warned that unless the conflict in the Middle East is resolved, it did not seem likely to be the last increase. That decision came after the October period closed, so it played no part in these numbers, but it does bear on what happens next.
Prices are moving in the same direction. BRC data put shop price inflation at 2.1% in October, the highest since 2024, and a shopper paying more for the weekly basket has less left over for a browsing trip into town. Taken together, this suggests storms deepened an existing decline rather than creating one.
How does October compare with the rest of 2026?
The monthly run shows how few positive months the sector has had. March was the only month in this sequence to show growth, helped by an early Easter, and it was followed by a 10.7% fall in April when that holiday effect reversed. BRC chief executive Dickinson said at the time that even after correcting for Easter, April was still weak.
| Month (2026) | Total UK footfall | High streets | Main factor cited |
|---|---|---|---|
| March | +2.4% | +2.0% | Early Easter |
| April | -10.7% | -9.2% | Easter shift, Iran conflict hitting confidence |
| May | -2.6% | -1.5% | Record late-May temperatures |
| June | -3.4% | -6.2% | Record heatwave |
| July | -2.1% | -3.8% | Heatwave |
| August | -1.7% | -3.1% | Cooler weather brought a partial return |
| September | -2.9% | -3.0% | Pre-Budget caution, costs, not weather |
| October | -4.7% | -5.2% | Storms, low confidence, inflation |
Sources: BRC-Sensormatic data as reported by Sharecast, Talking Retail, Furniture News, Big Furniture Group and FashionUnited.
High streets have now fallen further than the UK total in each of the last five months. The size of that gap varies, from 2.8 points in June to just 0.1 points in September, but the direction has not changed since May. May was the last month in which high streets did better than the total, when Dickinson noted that people who were out and about took the opportunity to pop into local stores.
The base effect matters as well. High streets grew 0.6% in October 2025, so this year’s fall is measured against a slightly stronger month than the total’s. That does not make the fall smaller for the shops involved, but it does mean a small part of the swing reflects last year’s better comparison.
Which parts of the UK were hit hardest?
Every nation fell, but the patterns underneath the headline differ. Wales had the steepest decline at 6.3%, while Northern Ireland had the smallest at 3.1% but also the largest swing, having been the only nation in growth in September.
| Nation | May 2026 | June 2026 | September 2026 | October 2026 | October 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| England | -3.0% | -3.0% | -3.4% | -4.6% | -0.9% |
| Scotland | +0.4% | +1.7% | -0.7% | -4.3% | -0.1% |
| Wales | -5.0% | -2.3% | -3.0% | -6.3% | +0.6% |
| Northern Ireland | -1.0% | -0.9% | +2.1% | -3.1% | -0.2% |
Sources: BRC-Sensormatic releases via Sharecast, FashionUnited, Furniture News, Big Furniture Group and the BRC. All figures are year on year.
England’s 4.6% fall drives the UK total because of its size, and Sumpter said in the August release that England was lagging the other home nations. The Yorkshire Post reports that Yorkshire was the third-lowest region for footfall growth, and the Irish News reports that stormy weather dampened footfall in Northern Ireland, where September’s 2.1% rise turned into a 3.1% fall. That is a swing of 5.2 points, the largest of any nation.
Wales: the sharpest fall in the UK
Nation.Cymru reports that Wales recorded the steepest decline of any UK nation. Wales also faced the toughest comparison, because it was the only nation to record growth in October 2025, at 0.6%. Measured from that base, Welsh visits are down from a stronger starting point than anywhere else in the UK.
The Welsh number is also a large step down within 2026. Footfall there was flat in July and down 3.0% in September, according to monthly figures, so October more than doubled September’s rate of decline.
Scotland: the Glasgow and Edinburgh gap
Scotland had been the UK’s relative bright spot, and Sumpter said it had “consistently outperformed much of the UK throughout the year”. That ended abruptly, with Scottish footfall falling 4.3% from a 0.7% fall in September, its steepest decline since April, Scottish Local Retailer reports.
The most striking figure in the whole release may be the difference between Scotland’s two biggest cities. Glasgow fell 8.2%, while Edinburgh fell only 1.4%, a gap of 6.8 points. The release does not explain the difference, and two cities can diverge for many local reasons, so it should not be read as a measure of storm damage alone. Lonsdale said amber and yellow weather alerts took their toll across city centres, shopping centres and retail parks, and he used the figures to call for a pro-business Scottish Budget next month.
Why are shop visits falling while some sales are rising?
This is the part of the story that can look contradictory. In the same month that footfall fell 4.7%, BDO’s High Street Sales Tracker recorded like-for-like sales across fashion, lifestyle and homewares up 4.6%, the best result since January 2025, with online sales up 10.1% against 2.2% in stores.
The two measures are counting different things. Footfall counts visits, whereas sales trackers count money, which rises with inflation and can rise if fewer visitors buy more each. BDO’s tracker also covers only fashion, lifestyle and homewares, and BDO itself warned against reading too much into a month that followed a very weak September.
| Indicator | Period | Reading | What it measures |
|---|---|---|---|
| BRC-Sensormatic | 4 to 31 October | Total footfall -4.7%, high streets -5.2% | Visits to shopping destinations |
| BDO High Street Sales Tracker | October | Online +10.1%, stores +2.2% | Like-for-like sales value in fashion, lifestyle and homewares |
| Next plc UK | 13 weeks to 31 October | Online +4.4%, shops -1.7% | Full-price sales at one retailer |
| GfK consumer confidence | October | -24, down 11 points | Household sentiment |
| ONS retail sales | September | Volumes -0.4%, online share 28.8% | Official sales volumes |
Sources: BRC-Sensormatic, BDO via InternetRetailing and FashionNetwork, Next plc trading statement, GfK, ONS.
Read together, these point to a shift rather than a simple collapse. Next’s figures are the cleanest example from a single company, with UK online sales rising while its shops fell over the same quarter. BDO attributed part of the online jump to colder weather prompting winter clothing purchases, and storms give shoppers one more reason to order from the sofa.
The important unknown is whether storm-affected purchases were cancelled or merely moved. Lonsdale said retailers will hope the weather “delayed purchases rather than deterred them”. Coats, boots and gifts still have to be bought by someone, so a good part of it may reappear, but it may reappear online and not in the shop that lost the visit.
What does this mean for Black Friday and Christmas?
Black Friday now carries more weight than usual. Sumpter called the period “a critical opportunity to inject some momentum into a Golden Quarter that has so far struggled to live up to its name”, having said after Halloween that the weekend would be “make-or-break”.
Sensormatic’s Christmas 2026 UK Shopper Insights report predicts that Saturday 28 November will be the biggest day for store visits during peak trading, followed by Boxing Day and Super Saturday on 19 December, according to Retail Times. It is worth noticing that the busiest store day is the day after Black Friday itself, not the event day, which falls on a working Friday for most people.
Online, the outlook is much stronger on paper. Adobe has forecast a record £28.52bn of UK online spending between 1 November and 31 December, up 6.2%, with Black Friday alone at £1.24bn. Bain’s forecast, as we noted in that report, has online up 7.5% against 2.8% for stores in November and December. Both imply a more willing shopper than October’s confidence reading suggests.
The next read will arrive quickly. GfK’s next confidence reading is due on 20 November, and the BRC’s monitors have generally appeared in the first full week or so of each month. If that pattern holds, the November edition should arrive in early December and, if it runs to 28 November, capture Black Friday weekend, which would make it the first hard evidence of whether shoppers came back.
Several dates over the coming weeks will show whether October was a storm-driven dip or something more lasting.
- 10 November: Marks & Spencer holds its capital markets day, after half-year results showing online growth ahead of stores.
- 12 November: B&M publishes interim results, and Poundland’s administrator protection period is due to run out.
- 20 November: GfK’s next consumer confidence reading, the first since the rate rise and the Budget.
- 27 and 28 November: Black Friday and the Saturday that Sensormatic expects to be the busiest in-store day of the peak.
- Early December: the BRC-Sensormatic November monitor, if the usual publication pattern holds.
- 6 January 2027: Next’s Christmas statement, which will show the split between online and shops.
Our simplest test is this: if the November figure comes back close to the 2% to 3% range seen in the summer, then October was largely weather. If it stays around 4% to 5% in calmer conditions, storms were hiding a weaker consumer, and high streets face a much harder winter. The full BRC-Sensormatic series is listed on the BRC Footfall Monitor page, although the detailed reports are for members.
What should UK shoppers expect now?
For shoppers, weak footfall does not automatically mean better bargains, but it does increase pressure on retailers to give people a reason to come in. NIQ, commenting on the BRC shop price data in October, said high street retailers would become more reliant on promotions to drive discretionary non-food spend.
Several practical points follow from the figures:
- Quieter weekdays: if you want to avoid crowds in store, Sensormatic’s forecast suggests avoiding 28 November, 19 December and 26 December.
- Compare in-store and online prices: Adobe expects online discounts to peak from Cyber Weekend, so check whether a local shop will match before you buy.
- Check the true online price: the CMA reminded online sellers on 2 November that mandatory delivery fees must be included in the total price shown.
- Plan for weather: click and collect from a retail park may be a safer bet than a weekend high street trip during a warning, and it is worth checking opening hours before setting out.
- Be careful with shops in difficulty: if a chain enters administration, gift cards and refunds can become harder to use, so avoid buying vouchers far in advance from a retailer you know to be in trouble.
That last point is not abstract this year. Poundland, with about 600 shops, was still in an unresolved rescue process at the time of writing, and the protection from its notice of intention to appoint administrators runs until about 12 November. Falling footfall is not the cause of that situation, but it is an unhelpful backdrop for any buyer weighing up how many shops to keep.
What does it mean for independent shops and small retailers?
Smaller shops have fewer ways of absorbing a poor month. A national chain can lean on its website and a broad portfolio of locations, while a single-site independent on an exposed high street may simply lose its best Saturday of the month to a storm. The BRC has said one in seven high street properties across the country now lies empty.
The strongest lesson from this data is that a location’s weakness in bad weather can be planned for, at least partly. The following steps are our reading of the figures, not guidance from the BRC:
- Record your own weekly visits against the national figure. If you fell 10% during the storm week and 3% in other weeks, you have a weather problem. If you fell 10% in every week, you have a different one.
- Keep a simple way to sell when nobody comes in. A phone number, a local delivery offer or a basic online listing can capture a purchase that would otherwise go to a national website.
- Publish holiday hours and weather closures early. A short update on your Google Business Profile tells a customer you are open before they decide against the trip.
- Do not build Christmas stock orders on the October number alone. The Sensormatic forecast suggests the biggest store days have yet to come, and a storm-affected month is a poor guide to demand.
The October figures also point to the limits of one national response. Glasgow and Edinburgh, barely an hour apart by road, produced very different results in the same month, which is a reminder that local conditions matter and that one UK-wide number can hide a good deal of variation for an individual trader.
What retailers want from ministers
The BRC used this release to focus on safety. Dickinson said that with a new government high street strategy, “the rejuvenation of our shopping destinations is a clear priority”, and that destinations must be safe for shoppers and staff.
Her specific request concerns the Crime and Policing Act. She said it is “vital that the Government grants the police the powers promised” in that legislation, whose commencement she said would scrap the £200 threshold for low-level theft and give workers the protections they need. The BRC had already urged ministers on 22 October to unleash those delayed powers.
The strategy Dickinson refers to is Hope on the High Street, published for England on 28 October, which includes a £125 million Derelict Buildings Fund for 60 councils. Business rates cuts begin in April 2027, so the main cost relief arrives after this Christmas.
Scotland has its own timetable. Lonsdale wants the Scottish Budget next month to be “unambiguously pro-business” and “pro-shopper”, avoiding extra costs for retailers.
Frequently asked questions
How much did UK footfall fall in October 2026?
Total UK footfall fell 4.7% year on year in the four weeks from 4 to 31 October 2026, according to BRC-Sensormatic data published on 6 November. That compares with a 2.9% fall in September and is the steepest decline since April.
Why did high street footfall fall in October?
The BRC cites two main causes: low consumer confidence, as households dealt with rising inflation and high energy costs, and stormy weather, which led many people to stay at home or choose places with easy parking. High street visits fell 5.2%, the largest drop of the three location types.
Which UK nation had the biggest footfall fall?
Wales had the steepest decline at 6.3%, followed by England at 4.6%, Scotland at 4.3% and Northern Ireland at 3.1%. In Scotland, Glasgow fell 8.2% while Edinburgh fell 1.4%.
Which storms affected UK shoppers in October 2026?
Storm Austen reached the UK on Friday 23 October and Storm Boelo followed over the weekend of 24 and 25 October. The Energy Networks Association said around 785,000 customers had been reconnected after outages by Monday 26 October, and several events were reported as cancelled.
What does footfall actually measure?
Footfall counts visits to shopping destinations, not money spent. The BRC says its monitor draws on 1.5 million footfall measurement devices and captures more than 40 billion shopper visits a year. Footfall can fall while sales rise, for example if prices increase, if shoppers buy more per trip or if purchases move online.
Did Halloween boost footfall in 2026?
Yes, on the day. Sensormatic reported footfall up 29% year on year on 31 October, helped by Halloween falling on a Saturday. However, the boost was brief: Sensormatic’s Andy Sumpter said that beyond Halloween, retailers “found little to celebrate”.
What is the busiest shopping day of Christmas 2026 likely to be?
Sensormatic’s Christmas 2026 UK Shopper Insights report predicts that Saturday 28 November, the day after Black Friday, will be the biggest day for store visits. It expects Boxing Day and Super Saturday on 19 December to follow.
Does falling footfall mean shops will cut prices?
Not necessarily. Weak traffic increases pressure to run promotions, and NIQ has said high street retailers are likely to rely more on them for non-food sales. However, shop price inflation reached 2.1% in October and retailers face higher costs, so shoppers should compare prices rather than assume a discount.