Shrewsbury businesses say footfall was high despite flooding misery

Footfall cameras operated by Springboard on behalf of Shrewsbury BID showed visitor numbers in High Street on Saturday were up by 0.6% compared to the previous week, and 3.5% higher than the same day last year.

Seb Slater, executive director of Shrewsbury BID, said: “Flooding is always devastating for those businesses and residents directly affected, but we are encouraged to see how resilient our town centre is at times like this.

“The vast majority of businesses remained open and it was great to see people coming into the town to support their local traders.

“There is clearly no short-term fix to prevent flooding which is sadly happening more regularly, although we continue to work with Shropshire Council and other partners about how the impacts of flooding can be reduced.

“We would like to thank people for their support, which is greatly appreciated by our town centre businesses. We would also like to thank the council workers who have done such a great job over the weekend on the clean-up operation.

"We know people often come into town to look at the floods, but a number of businesses have reported steady trading too, so it seems like people were spending as well as flood-watching.”

Stacey Hill, owner of Oberon in Wyle Cop, said: “We were really busy on Saturday, which was quite surprising with our nearest car park, St Julian’s Friars, being closed.

“It was really encouraging to see people finding other ways of getting into town, and it was great to see so many people out and about.”

Bobby Bosca, owner The Riverbank in Victoria Quay and La Piazzetta in The Square, did have to temporarily close The Riverbank due to floodwater.

But he said: "We were able to move some bookings over to La Piazzetta, which was very busy all weekend. We would like to say a really big thank you to everyone who came into town and supported local businesses – it means a lot during these challenging times.”