The People & Places Partnership is teaming-up with Proximity Futures to combine the two companies’ expertise on how customers are using town and city centres, as they reopen and seek to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Case studies showing potential
Joint work on case studies on tracking Nuneaton’s footfall through the COVID-19 pandemic and quarterly footfall monitoring for LOVE Loughborough BID, showed the potential for such a combined approach in boosting local knowledge. For People & Places, this represents an obvious extension of its evidence-based approach to town centre action planning demonstrated in the revitalising town centres toolkit it prepared for the Local Government Association. This comes at a time when learning from town centre footfall & foot-flow is nationally recognised as even more important by the bodies such as the High Streets Task Force and through government guidance for its Reopening High Streets Safely support.
Wealth of comparison data
Working with Proximity Futures, enables People & Places to help town and city centre place managers who are already using, or planning to use, the company’s GEO-Sense and Elephant WiFi systems. These services provide a wealth of ‘live’ and historic comparison data indicating how people move around town centres, dwell times, frequency of visits etc. People & Places’ role is to provide external expertise to help local place leaders analyse their town centre data to identify trends and issues to add to their local knowledge and guide future delivery.
As Lisa Brown, LOVE Loughborough BID Manager, commented “It was a valuable opportunity for us to see Loughborough’s data in greater detail, especially visualising the impact the COVID-19 pandemic has had on the town’s footfall. The level of detail has given us a broader understanding of visitor behaviour, and how we can plan forward with the safe re-opening of Loughborough town centre.”
People, places & proximity services
Through this joint working, People & Places and Proximity Futures are offering the following services:
- Quarterly Analysis: Quarterly, comparative analysis of overall, day-time and evening economy footfall and foot-flow around the town, benchmarked using GEO-Sense key performance indicators against the previous year’s activity. This takes account of COVID-19 impacts and management responses to track changes and help inform future decision making.
- Bespoke Analysis: Design and delivery of bespoke analysis to understand the impacts of a particular town centre activity such as special events, management changes and COVID-19 interventions. This can include additional analysis of Elephant Wi-Fi This can include presentations and assistance in engagement with key stakeholder groups.
- Town centre action planning: Inclusion of footfall and foot-flow monitoring as part of the evidence-based town centre research, engagement, monitoring and analysis from the outset. Using this approach, proposals for GEO-Sense and Elephant Wi-Fi are included as integral to town centre recovery and revitalisation action planning using the LGA’s revitalising town centres toolkit for local leaders.
To find out more
Read more in our blog offering understanding on how returning customers will vote with their feet.
Get an understanding of our joined-up approach to town centre recovery and revitalisation from the Local Government Association’s national revitalising town centres on-line toolkit prepared by People & Places.
Learn about People & Places’ joined-up approach to revitalisation provided by our ‘specialities’ in our guide to ‘‘bringing facts and faces to town centres‘.
For an informal chat or more information about any of these services, contact services@people-places.net or ring Chris Wade on 07788 278126.
