High street footfall fell 5.2% year on year in October 2026, the sharpest drop since April, according to the British Retail Consortium–Sensormatic footfall monitor published on 6 November 2026. Total retail footfall across the UK fell 4.7% in the four weeks to 31 October, worse than the 2.9% fall in September, with back-to-back named storms Austen and Boelo keeping shoppers at home. "Footfall fell sharply in every part of the UK in October," said Helen Dickinson, chief executive of the British Retail Consortium. "Low consumer confidence was likely a key factor in the decline in visitors, as households navigated rising inflation and high energy costs."
That is the headline number, but not the whole story: what shoppers find when they do go out has changed more in the last few years than at any time since the department store era. The shops are different, the reasons to visit are different, and the towns holding up are doing so in ways that would have looked strange a decade ago. This article is about what is changing on the street itself; a companion article on this site looks at the towns fighting back with regeneration money, market halls and events.
The empty shop is no longer the whole story
About 13.7% of shops stood empty across Britain in September 2025, according to Local Data Company figures cited by City of York Council — roughly one shop in seven. That hides a wide gap. The Centre for Cities reported in July 2025 that Newport had the highest city-centre vacancy rate of the 62 places it assessed, at 19%, followed by Bradford at 17.6%, while London stood at 8.5% and Cambridge at 7.4%. Retail parks, by contrast, ended 2025 with vacancy of just 4.8%, a record low, according to Knight Frank and Savills — free parking and big units are still winning a large share of shopping trips. Former retail units are reopening as something else: coffee shops and bakeries, independent restaurants, gyms and yoga studios, dentists and health clinics, barbers and beauty salons, nurseries and co-working spaces. A gym member or a cafe regular comes every week; a clothing shopper might visit twice a year. None of them can be posted through a letterbox.
BDO's High Street Sales Tracker recorded in-store sales up 2.2% in October 2026.
Altrincham: the market hall that did the heavy lifting
In Altrincham, in Greater Manchester, the covered market was once surrounded by empty units. It now runs as a food hall with market stalls, and the streets around it have filled with cafes, bars and small traders feeding off the market-day crowds. The Manchester Evening News has described its market, known locally as Alty Market, as a hub for street food and drink where people gather at communal tables.
Bury: a market town rebuilding in public
Bury, also in Greater Manchester, shows the other side of the same change — a town rebuilding its market in full view of its shoppers. Its indoor market hall closed suddenly in October 2023, when reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete was found in the roof, displacing 49 businesses. By April 2025 the emergency response had cost more than £950,000, according to the Bury Times. The Government has since announced £10 million for the indoor market hall through its new Local Renewal Fund, and a new indoor food, drinks and events hall, Casewells, is due to open on 26 November.
Bury Council is also pressing ahead with a £33 million regeneration of the wider market, including a new flexi hall and improved outdoor market. "Markets are vital to local economies and sit at the heart of thriving communities," said Councillor Eamonn O'Brien, leader of Bury Council, at the launch of a Greater Manchester markets partnership in December 2025. "By joining forces, we can drive market growth hand-in-hand with town centre regeneration."
Not every market story is a success. Zulfikar Malkan, who runs one of the last surviving stalls in Eccles Market Hall, told the Manchester Evening News: "I've been trading here for more than 30 years and things are getting worse." His market has shrunk to three traders.
Margate: a cluster, not a scheme
Margate, on the Kent coast, shows a different route again. Its Old Town, a tight grid of narrow streets behind the seafront, filled up with independent shops, galleries and cafes as the town's fortunes changed, helped by the Turner Contemporary gallery on the seafront drawing visitors into the area. Nobody planned a single scheme; a cluster of small traders, one after another, made the Old Town worth a trip in its own right.
Margate also shows the evening side of the change: restaurants, bars, cinemas and theatres keep some streets busy after shops close. The food festival calendar does the same work on a bigger scale: the Ludlow Food Festival, held inside Ludlow Castle, ran from 11 to 13 September 2026 with more than 180 producer stalls, drawing visitors into a small Shropshire town for a whole weekend.
What shoppers gain — and what they lose
For shoppers, the changing high street brings trade-offs. The convenience of one-stop shopping under a few big roofs has faded, and some things — particularly big-ticket goods and niche products — are now easier to buy online. But a street of independents offers a more interesting mix than a row of identical chains, and staff in small shops tend to know their products and their customers. Money spent in a local shop circulates locally — paying local wages, suppliers and rents — in a way that money spent with a distant warehouse does not.
The government has begun to treat empty shops as a problem councils can act on directly. In March 2025 the government told Parliament it had launched a £1.5 billion Plan for Neighbourhoods covering 75 places across England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, and introduced High Street Rental Auctions, a power for councils to auction the lease of commercial properties that have stood persistently vacant. The commercial vacancy rate in England was 13.3% at that point, rising to 16.2% in the West Midlands.
As trader Justin Brierley, 54, told the Manchester Evening News: "Markets aren't just about the money, it's about the community."
None of this is to say every high street is thriving. Some towns, particularly those that lost a major employer or that sit close to a large out-of-town shopping centre, are still struggling. The October footfall figures are a reminder of that: high streets fell further than retail parks, down 5.2% against 3.6%, and further than shopping centres, down 4.1%. Wales fell hardest of all, down 6.3%. The towns winning are the ones that stopped trying to rebuild the high street of 2005 — a market hall that feeds its streets, market days regular enough to build a habit around, and a cluster of independents strong enough to be a destination in its own right. The high street that survives this autumn will not be the one with the most shops. It will be the one with the most reasons to visit.