New tool to help councils measure high street footfall

Huq Industries has launched a new tool to help councils measure football across high streets and town centres.

The Community Vision tool aims to give a highly accurate, real-time measure of footfall across high-streets and town centres.

It is powered by Huq’s proprietary platform, built on its first party mobile location data, which makes it much more than a footfall monitor.

The tool also provides measures of footfall density – where visitors cluster on the high-street – and live catchment area mapping.

This allows local councils to make urgent decisions about Covid marshalls or safety signage as the UK’s high streets reopen for business, and learn about who is visiting their centres from where.

For all outputs, socio-economic and demographic attributes are included to provide additional insight about human activity in UK towns and cities.

‘The decisions that local councils make are coming under scrutiny like never before.  The pre-pandemic playbook, local knowledge, and conventional footfall sensors fail to provide them with sufficient visibility on how their centres are being used,’ said Huq chief executive, Conrad Poulson.

‘The pandemic has triggered so much volatility in the UK economy that there is a need for detailed, real-time data to support both short term and longer term strategic decisions that are being made.

‘Local authorities are under real pressure to make their areas attractive places for businesses, workers, retailers, shoppers, residents, tourists and others. Thinking about the kinds of businesses or other entities to bring into vacant units and what sort of high street to build post Covid means understanding the kinds of people who come to the local areas and what motivates them to do so.

‘The pandemic has triggered a bigger strategic conversation around building high streets and urban centres that are fit for society’s changing needs and behaviours, particularly around the appropriate mix of retail, work, health, education and leisure facilities.

‘With this in mind, there is a growing awareness of the need to access deeper, richer data, going well beyond existing footfall monitors, to learn about the complex dynamics of our town/city centres and high streets.  We spotted the gap in the market for intelligent insight to inform such significant decisions, which is why we have developed Community Vision,’ added Poulson.

Photo Credit – Pixabay