A decrease in the number of people visiting stores in Scotland throughout March has led to pleas from experts for swift action to generate footfall.

Figures from the Scottish Retail Consortium (SRC) showed that footfall in Scotland’s shops dropped by 21.1% in March – 0.5 percentage points better than the performance in February.

However, the number is worse than the UK average decline of 15.4%, with Scotland again seeing the steepest decline in footfall for all nations in the UK.

The number of people in shopping centres declined by 32%, which was an improvement on the decline of 34.7% seen in February.

In Glasgow, Scotland’s largest city, footfall decreased by 19.5% in March – 1.3 percentage points better than the previous month.

Due to the pandemic forcing many retail locations to bounce between opening and closing, the SRC data compared March 2022 figures with pre-pandemic data from 2019.

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