As plans unfold for progressively re-opening our town & city centres, we consider the necessary first steps to recovery through first learning about what has changed.  We do this by pulling together available evidence from national surveys of how business practices and customer perceptions have changed during the initial crisis phase of the COVID-19 pandemic.  We also look to lessons and learning from social and behavioural science to provide insights in to how local leaders can work positively with public perceptions to manage a smooth transition to recovery and a lasting transformation of our town and city centres.

Need for evidence & understanding

There are two obvious ways that decision-makers might seek to respond to the COVID-19 crisis and take the first steps to recovery:

• React out of urgency with a desire to quickly restore ‘business as usual’.
• Identify with apparent behavioural changes that align with their perceived priorities for societal transformation

Time is undoubtedly of the essence and equally crisis can provide a catalyst for long-term change. A third approach, and the one we will focus on here, equates to taking a moment to pause, assessing what has changed and responding promptly in a way that might help nurture positive progress. The first steps to recovery that we advocate therefore, are to seek to provide a knowledge base for future resilience/recovery planning.

We begin by looking at the objective understanding that is emerging from national survey work about changing customer behaviour/perceptions & potential implications for business practices and town centre performance post-crisis.  We structure this by the phases of recovery planning proposed by the Institute of Place Management for post-COVID 19 recovery planning, namely: crisis; pre-recovery or transition during 2020; and ultimately recovery and long-term transformation.  It is an evidence base that will need to continue to evolve beyond the first steps to recovery as the story unfolds and behaviours and practices continue to adapt.

National evidence base

Here is a summary of an evolving national evidence base drawing on sources identified by the IPM and Association of Town & City Management:

Current changes (crisis phase)

• IPM/Springboard tracking UK high street footfall changes across four town types from February 22^nd to April 22^nd highlights how different places have been affected in different ways.  We need to understand more about the long-term differences between places.
• The Centre for Cities analysis of which cities will benefit from the  Business Rates holiday indicates different geographical impacts of support measures. More needs to be done to understand this across all support measures; places; business types and timescales.
• The Centre for Cities analysis of likely impact of COVID-19 crisis on the economies of British cities and large towns indicates different levels of resilience in wider economies that will impact on local spend.  This could equally be done for different types of town centre businesses, e.g. convenience v comparison retail.
• A new survey by the National Association of British Market Authorities (NABMA) shows that during lockdown, only 22% of markets are trading & that footfall in those markets has dropped 80%-90%.  Critically, 35% of operators now fear their markets may never open again.

Transition during 2020 (pre-recovery)

• YouGov April 20^th/21^st findings on probable consumer responses post COVID-19 lockdown indicates the probable medium-term impacts on different business types.
• In polling by Ipsos MORI, 67% of Britons say they will feel uncomfortable going to large public gatherings, and 61% with using public transport or going to bars & restaurants. Young people are most at ease,  with 36% of 18-34 year-olds feeling comfortable with returning to bars & restaurants, compared to only 22% of 55-75s.
• PWC’s Consumer Sentiment Survey for April 2020 indicates current perceptions of customers about how their behaviour may change including in relation to different business ownerships, brands and locations.  It also shows potential switch to online. This highlights key, current development challenges about maintaining and expanding customer engagement.
• The ONS’s initial findings on Coronavirus & the social impacts on Great Britain provide high-level data that needs to be tracked & investigated at a local level.  Similar information is available on the economic impacts.
• The YouGov survey commissioned by the RSA’s Food, Farming and Countryside Commission (FFCC)  on the impact of Coronavirus on food behaviours and attitudes points to possible, broad changes in public behaviour and aspirations.

Recovery (2021>)

• Recent polling by Ipsos shows that only 58% of Britons agreed that it is important that climate change is prioritised in the economic recovery after Coronavirus. 66% of Britons, however, believe that in the long-term climate change is as serious a crisis as COVID-19. The polling also shows that Briton’s are split on whether or not the  government should take actions which might harm the environment to help the economy recover, with opinions split 46% agreeing and 43% disagreeing.

Understanding social & behavioural change

In some senses the handling of the initial crisis has been challenging though clear-cut with little need for nuanced messaging or actions: “stay at home and protect the NHS”. As the UK Governments seek to publish guidance for the transitional pre-recovery stage likely to stretch into the summer, the rules focused on maintaining physical distance will become both more nuanced and transitory. As a result, the messages from public, community and business groups will have to become more sophisticated; targeted at different groups including by age and lifestyle; engender understanding; and enable adoption as new social norms.

Here we look at insights from an authoritative article in the Nature scientific journal on using social and behavioural science to support COVID-19 pandemic response and begin to consider how this might be applied by place partnerships including public, community and business groups as we move in to the pre-recovery and recovery phases of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Learning from crisis phase

• Fear: Appealing to fear leads people to change their behaviour if they feel capable of dealing with the threat but leads to defensive reactions when they feel helpless to act.
• Panic: The concept of ‘panic’ has largely been abandoned by researchers because it neither describes nor explains what people usually do in crisis.  Stocking-up on supplies is adaptive in preparation for potential self-isolation.
• Social norms: Cooperation and orderly, norm-governed behaviour are common during a crisis; and there are many instances when people display remarkable altruism
• Persuasion: Research is needed to determine how a more positive frame could educate the public and relieve negative emotions while increasing public health behaviours.
• Social isolation: The use of the term ‘social distancing’ might imply that one needs to cut off meaningful interactions. A preferable term is ‘physical distancing’ because it allows for the fact that social connection is possible even when people are physically separated.

Adaptive learning during transition

• Persuasion: Messages that (i) emphasise benefits to the recipient, (ii) focus on protecting others, (iii) align with the recipient’s moral values, (iv) appeal to social consensus or scientific norms and/ or (v) highlight the prospect of social group approval tend to be persuasive.
• Trust: Methods to increase certainty include helping people feel knowledgeable about their new attitude and making them feel that their new attitude is the ‘moral’ one to have.
• Fake news: Preparing people for misinformation and ensuring they have accurate information and counter arguments against false information before they encounter conspiracy theories, fake news, or other forms of misinformation, can help ‘inoculate’ them against false information.
• Role models: Norms of prosocial behaviour are more effective when coupled with the expectation of social approval and modelled by ‘in-group’ members who are central in social networks.
• Marginalisation: There is a need for more targeted public health information within distinct groups or marginalized communities and for partnerships between public health authorities and trusted organizations that are internal to these communities.
• Leadership: Reliable information and public health messages are needed from national leaders and central health officials. But local voices can amplify these messages and help build the trust that is needed to spur behavioural change.
• Shared identity: A shared sense of identity or purpose can be encouraged by addressing the public in collective terms and by urging ‘us’ to act for the common good.
• Nudging: ‘Nudges’ can be an alternative to more coercive means of behaviour change or used to complement regulatory, legal and other imposed policies when widespread changes must occur rapidly.
• Learning: Instead of the passive use of social media, technologies that are informationally rich and foster learning may be better suited to generating empathy and connection.

Long-term behavioural change

• Polarisation: A pandemic can lead to different segments of the population arriving at different conclusions about the threat in the situation,appropriate actions and long-term implications that suit their existing narrative. Actionable steps that could reduce polarization include highlighting a common identity and ‘inoculating’ against fake news.
• Bipartisan: Leaders and members of the media should highlight bipartisan support for COVID-related measures, when they exist, as such endorsements in other contexts have reduced polarisation and led to less-biased reasoning.

Adapting & applying locally

The vital next stage is to begin to locally adapt and apply this knowledge from the national evidence base and scientific understanding of behavioural changes.  This begins by looking at what we know already from national findings; what we don’t know but would be helpful to understand; and how we might develop the local evidence-base and understanding in towns in ways which might also inform the national picture.

These areas for further locally-based research can be developed as a basis for local stakeholder interviews and surveys including the business community, local residents and visitors. Where possible this should be achieved in a way that continues do draw-on national-level findings and benchmarks against them.  Cooperation and sharing of survey templates between neighbouring towns and hopefully more widely, will enable comparisons and shared understanding.

The local understanding from such survey work during the crisis and pre-recovery phases should be used alongside existing knowledge of stakeholder experiences and perceptions as well as town centre metrics such as analysis of business types, foot-flow and parking usage.   Together this data and understanding can form the basis for future monitoring and management of town centres in the recovery and transformational phases using data dashboards that ultimately help to demonstrate success and determine long-term priorities for action.

Further details

For more post-COVID 19 recovery planning including information and insights in to preparing locally-based surveys of changing business practices, customer behaviour and town centre metrics, take a look at the updated version of Revitalising town centres: a toolkit for councils. This national toolkit was prepared by the People & Places Partnership on behalf of the LGA and takes account of the IPM’s new Post-COVID 19 Recovery Framework.

View the short, accompanying video on taking the first steps towards town centre recovery.

You can keep up-to-date through our review of national town centre trends including post-COVID 19 changes in behaviour and business practices.

You can read about emerging good practice and sources of support during the initial crisis phases of the COVID-19 pandemic in this news items on testing times for our town centres.

For specific information on managing streets and public spaces, you can access our guidance on the practicalities of reopening town centres which includes a downloadable checklist.

To learn about how a series of Suffolk towns are adapting plans for the revitalisation of their town centres, visit this page of resources on creating a forward framework for town centre revitalisation .