Sheffield high street struggling to recover from impact of Covid-19 lockdown

The organisation’s high streets recovery tracker which documents how cities and towns across Britain are recovering from the impact of the coronavirus lockdown, identifies Sheffield as one of the cities finding it difficult to increase footfall.

While all areas have seen a sharp drop in business activity since lockdown, Centre For Cities (CFC) have noted smaller towns such as Basildon, Burnely and Southend appear to be recovering from the pandemic more quickly, compared to cities such as Edinburgh, Cardiff and Glasgow.

Despite Sheffield Business Improvement District (BID) documenting ‘a steady return of people to the city centre’ since non-essential retailers began reopening their doors on June 15, the city only has a recovery rate of 33, compared to a pre-lockdown baseline of 100.

This ranks Sheffield’s recovery from the pandemic near the bottom 10 of all cities and towns across Britain.

Sheffield BID reported that during the high streets’ first week of reopening, there were just over 191,500 people across the city centre – 61% reduction from the same time last years.

There has been an increase of shoppers with Fargate documenting a 17% increase in footfall from the week of June 22, compared to the previous week when shops were first given the green light to reopen.

This amounted to a recorded footfall of 210,500 across Sheffield’s main retail areas which was a 58% reduction on the same period in 2019.

Sheffield City Council is calling on businesses to improve the high street and local environment while reviewing the impact of business rates on the city’s organisations which have been hit hard by the coronavirus crisis.

The council has partnered with accountancy and consultancy firm, PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PWC) to conduct research on the issue to build an evidence base for future work.

Businesses are encouraged to complete a survey to provide feedback on the challenges they’ve faced during the pandemic.

While Sheffield high street is struggling to recover from the impact of Covid-19 and return to pre-lockdown levels of activity, detailed proposals have been unveiled for the council’s economic project, Heart of the City II.

Hotelier Radisson Blu has invested in a prominent location on Pinstone Street in the city centre.

The development which has been designed by HLM Architects in Sheffield includes 154 bedrooms, conferencing facilities, a rooftop bar and restaurant, alongside complementary retail and food unit space on the hotel’s ground floor.

Details of the project’s latest proposal coincides with the news that restaurant operator The New World Trading Company, which operates The Botanist Restaurant at Leopold Square, has also signed up to the Heart of the City II scheme.

The Heart of the City II which aims to transform the city’s commercial, leisure, retail and residential areas is claimed to support 7,000 jobs once complete.

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