London High Streets
Data Explorer
Welcome to the Data Explorer, developed as part of the High Streets Data Service.
This application helps you explore Footfall and Spend data by focusing on a particular High Street of interest, understand how it is doing now, how this compares to a pre-Covid ‘normal’ year (2019) and how this year compares to the current period.
As well as exploring your focus High Street, you can also compare it with other High Streets of your choice or with a shortlist of suggested High Streets from across London that have similar footfall patterns.
To find out about updates (including vacancy and context data) and how colleagues are using the tool, please join the discussion here.
Select a Time Period and Focus Area (High Street, BID, Town Centre)
Select a date range, and a primary "Focus Area". You can select up to 2 years of data.
A default date range and area has been pre-selected for you...
Select a Date Range
Choose a Focus Area to explore
You can select specific High Streets, Bespoke Areas, Business Improvement Districts (BIDs) or Town Centres ...
Note: Some deeper area profiling analysis is only available for High Streets.
Explore consumer spend in the Focus Area
Select the type of transactions you would like to compare in your Focus Area
For your selected focus area, you can compare different types of spend (using Mastercard data) on the same chart.
Note: When viewing "% of Normal", the baseline at 1 (100% of Normal) is based on the Mastercard spend in the same week in 2019.
If spending was unchanged compared to 2019, the line would be at 1, if it’s above 1, spending has increased, and if it’s below 1, it’s decreased.
The “Retail” category includes all retail spending, including ‘apparel,’ ‘eating places,’ and other categories of retail spend.
NEW! Three Hourly Spend
The time series below shows consumer spend amount index, each day, in each 3-hr time period, for Focus Area that you have chosen. It is the sum of the individual small grids that cover each High Street, Town Centre or BID. This can be used to show variation at different times of the day or trends over time.
Caution: If the time series shows no (or infrequent) values, the underlying data is likely suppressed due to low levels of activity in that area for that time. Information how these values are calculated are included in this explanatory report.
Choosing multiple 'Time(s) of day', allows you to compare how your focus area is performing at different times of day.
By choosing a 'Single Time of day', and a number of alternative areas of interest, you can compare how each area is perfoming at that time.
“Londoners are more active at night and have later bedtimes than anyone else in the UK. Two-thirds of us regularly do everyday activities at night … one-third of London's workforce also work at night.”
NEW! Three Hourly Footfall
The time series below shows counts of people, each day, in each 3-hr time period, for the Focus Area that you have chosen. It is the sum of the individual small hex grids that cover each High Street, Town Centre or BID. Can be used to show variation at different times of the day or trends over time.
“In 2020, local High Streets outside Town Centres recovered better after restrictions were lifted than the larger Metropolitan Town Centres.”
Compare spend in Focus Area with other Areas of my choice
By choosing a number of alternative areas of interest, you can compare how each area is perfoming for a given (Mastercard) transaction type.
Where do Visitors & Workers in my Focus Area come from?
This map shows which London Boroughs ‘Workers’ or ‘Other Visitors’ are originating from when they arrive in your focus area’s primary borough.
The data is based on 2019 anonymised and aggregated mobility data obtained from Vodafone and may not reflect current trends.
Note: Your focus area’s primary borough will always show 0%, as no internal trips are displayed. However, we are currently working on also showing what proportion of “visitors” are from the local borough.
“Knowing a town’s place in the activity hierarchy should provide the basis for the development of more effective and appropriate town centre visions, strategies and action plans.”
– National High Streets Task Force
Signature for the Focus Area in a ‘normal’ year (2019)
The National High Streets Task Force classifies high streets into different “signatures” based on footfall. Thinking about an Area based on how busy it is at different times of the day, across the week, seasonally and its overall size, your focus area ({{mcardFocusAreaLabel}}) can be characterised as: “{{appState.mcardFocusArea.cluster_hourly}}, {{appState.mcardFocusArea.cluster_daily}}, {{appState.mcardFocusArea.cluster_size}}”:
Hourly Profile
Daily Profile
Size / Density Profile
Characteristically Similar Areas in 2019
Below are areas which have a similar “signature” to the area you have selected. While not necessarily geographically near your selected area, they are statistically similar, and so may be a better comparison than those nearby.
You can read more about how we determined which areas are "similar", here: https://data.london.gov.uk/dataset/highstreet-clusters
We have pre-selected 5 of 10 similar areas and displayed them on the chart below. You can change that selction with this dropdown menu...