GLASWEGIANS are coming back to their city centre to shop, eat, and have a good time when the working week is over.
Stuart Patrick, chief executive of Glasgow Chamber of Commerce, told the Go Radio Business Show with Hunter & Haughey that weekend business in Glasgow was back up at two thirds of where it was in February 2020.
“But during the working week, the data is still truly awful,” he added.
The Centre for Cities, a research and policy institute focused on improving the economic success of UK cities, estimated that only 8% of Glasgow office workers were back at their desks by the end of July, Mr Patrick said. This compared to 15% for London.
Overall, footfall in Glasgow city centre at the end of July was only 48% of what it had been back in February 2020.
“Granted, that means we're slowly climbing up the lead table of the 64 large towns and cities that the Centre for Cities has been monitoring every month using mobile phone data,” Mr Patrick added. “Having been the second worst city earlier in the year, beating only London, we are now sixth worst, catching Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds and Oxford in recent months.”
Larger companies were broadly following the Scottish Government’s advice to continue working from home, Mr Patrick added.
“For businesses serving the city centre and especially the smaller ones, the outlook remains pretty bleak,” he said. “And with only three weeks of the job retention scheme support left, I fear we are about to find out which businesses have not survived.”
Mr Patrick said the likelihood of new money coming from the Treasury for an extension of the job retention scheme was “currently hovering around zero.”
“We can only hope that this wave [of infections] passes quickly and vaccination uptake keeps on growing.”
As part of the host city business engagement programme for COP26, the United Nations climate summit, Mr Patrick said Glasgow Chamber was including an ambitious inward trade mission inviting firms to Glasgow from Germany, Indonesia, Norway, Singapore and many other countries.
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