An interesting report from Centre for Cities suggests, perhaps unsurprisingly, that debit and credit card transactions show hybrid working has led to the UK’s city centres taking a lower share of weekday spending than before the pandemic.
Centre for Cities – a research and policy organisation which aims to improve the UK’s urban economies – compared in-person spending in 2019 and 2024 by city centre workers in London and nine other large UK cities, Birmingham, Bristol, Glasgow, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle, Nottingham and Sheffield.
It found weekday spending shifted away from city centres to workers’ home neighbourhoods during that period. The largest shift was in groceries purchases, and the share of spending in pubs, bars and eateries saw a modest shift from city centres to areas within a short distance of workers’ homes.
After-work socialising in London is now most likely to happen on a Thursday in 2024. In 2019, Fridays accounted for the highest share of all city-centre workers’ pub and bar spending, 25 per cent, falling to under a fifth in 2024. This corresponds with higher office attendance rates on Thursdays.
Across all other large UK cities, the share of pub and bar spending happening from Monday to Friday was lower in 2024 than before the Covid pandemic. Saturday has become by far the most popular day accounting for almost one in every £3 spent in pubs and bars.
Andrew Carter, Chief Executive of Centre for Cities said: “The data shows that hybrid working patterns have had a knock-on impact on spending by workers in city centres, with a likely impact on the takings of shops, bars and restaurants. As the world of work continues to change, where we end up in terms of days in the office will have implications for how vibrant the high streets around our offices will be.”
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