Town Centre On the Up!

The health of our town centre is often a topic of debate, particularly when there are changes to local parking, road works and vacant shops. We use a wide range of data to monitor the health of the town centre, this includes car parking, mobile data, visits to the Local Information Centre and footfall through the street markets.

In October there were around 16 vacant units representing 4.8% of the total. This is down from 19 (5.7%) in April and 38 (11%) in August last year; compared to a national average of 14%.

In terms of footfall we are currently outperforming both the South West and UK average; our LIC is breaking all previous records for monthly footfall. Between January and October, we’ve had over 16,000 people pop in to the Town Council information centre. With 1,413 town council queries, 8,342 tourist and visitor queries, 4,254 community queries and 2,325 public transport related queries.

Over 350,000 off-street car park tickets were purchased between April and August 2022, this is an increase of over 19,000 on the same period in 2021 and an indicator that not only are people returning to the town centre after COVID, but that Cirencester is a go-to destination for visitors and day to day shopping.

Whilst this data is good news and Cirencester was buzzing with local residents and visitors over Advent weekend, we know that the cost of living crisis is having an impact on local trade and people are being extra careful on how and where they spend their money. We will continue to support the local economy where we can.