Salisbury BID is the organisation who fund the collection of footfall data. There are 3 permanent footfall counters located in the city centre; they’re on Queen Street, High Street and Fisherton Street.
Springboard is the company who provide Salisbury BID with the intelligence.
The BID receives weekly and monthly reports which give in-depth insights into the city centre’s footfall. The reports also benchmark our city’s data with the South West, UK averages and the High Street index.
Footfall data has been collected by Salisbury BID since November 2014, so the city holds over 5 years data which is used to analyse and compare trends and patterns.
Robin McGowan, Salisbury BID’s Chief Executive said: “Footfall data is so important to be able to measure the performance and success of a place. The intelligence is also used to influence future plans and initiatives in the city centre.
“Our city’s footfall data was a reliable source that demonstrated the impact on Salisbury following the Novichok incidents in 2018. It was this data that helped secure millions of pounds of recovery money for Salisbury from the Government.”
“Not only is the data really important for managing the city, but many of our business members value these reports. Businesses can use the data to assess their sales performance against the footfall in the city and it helps them make business decisions such as opening hours and staffing levels at different times.”
Diane Wehrle, Marketing and Insights Director at Springboard added: “We are proud and delighted to be able to help Salisbury establish how successful it is, and to enable it to continue to track this in such a transformational period for our high streets.”
The monthly footfall reports can be downloaded from Salisbury BID’s website.
Salisbury BID also measure the city centre’s ground floor shop vacancy rate on a quarterly basis. In October 2019, the city’s vacancy rate was 8.4%, which is lower than the South West average (9.8%) and the UK’s average (10.0%).
The third, and final, city data that Salisbury BID tracks is the sales performance of retailers and hospitality providers. A sample of businesses in the city centre submit their sales data anonymously, which gives insights into weekly trends and performance of the city.
In exchange for submitting their data, businesses receive a weekly report which benchmarks Salisbury’s performance against national and regional statistics. Businesses are invited to contact Salisbury BID if they’d like to get involved with this initiative.
In partnership with VisitWiltshire, Salisbury BID co-fund the Visit Salisbury website to promote the city to visitors. The Visit Salisbury website has a full events calendar for Salisbury.
