Sunderland city centre footfall almost back to pre-lockdown levels as people take advantage of Eat Out to Help Out and shops reopening

A new piece of research shows that Sunderland has among the best towns and cities in the country when it comes to encouraging people back into its shops as the restrictions have eased.

According to think tank Centre for Cities, Sunderland is now at 93 per cent of its pre-lockdown levels.

And that puts the city centre’s pace of recovery among the 25 per cent in the UK.

Centre for Cities’ research highlighted that cities that are a comparable size to Sunderland had recovered about 79 per cent of their pre-Covid levels, while overall many major cities had only reached around 56 per cent.

Sharon Appleby, Head of Business Operations at Sunderland BID, said: “Businesses and organisations across the city worked together ahead of the re-opening of non-essential retail and the hospitality industry to ensure that we had a robust plan in place,” she said.

“We set up a Recovery Task Force so we could be properly prepared for when lockdown was eased and I’m sure this is part of the reason why we are seeing such a positive response.

“We carried out market research so we could find out what people wanted and what would make them feel safe to return to the city centre and then we acted on that information."The Centre for Cities has created a High Street Recovery Tracker which provides data on the 63 largest cities and towns across the UK.

Sunderland-born Centre for Cities economist Paul Swinney sad: “Like other small and medium city centres, Sunderland has bounced back well since lockdown has been lifted and footfall is close to where it was back in March.

"The Eat out to Help Out scheme has helped recently, with an increase in people on Monday to Wednesday to take advantage of the discount on food and drinks.

"Like other large city centres, Newcastle has not seen the same sort of rebound.

“It relies on the thousands of office workers that come into its city centre and they are yet to return.”

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