Footfall data for local authorities
Measure your high street. Prove what works.
Councils and regeneration teams use WhereThen to baseline town-centre footfall, evidence funding bids and demonstrate — objectively — the impact of every intervention, without installing a single sensor.
Free demo access to five example coffee shop locations — no card required.
Why councils use footfall data
Public money demands public evidence. Footfall gives regeneration, economic development and place teams a consistent, defensible measure of how town centres are really performing — before, during and after you intervene.
Funding bids and business cases
Regeneration and levelling-up style programmes demand evidence. A footfall baseline strengthens the bid, and the same measure later demonstrates delivery — a before-and-after you can put in front of any assessor.
Measuring interventions
Pedestrianisation, markets, events, streetscape improvements — see whether footfall actually changed, by how much, at what times of day and for which visitor groups.
Town centre health monitoring
Track visits by hour, day and month across every centre you manage. Spot decline early, compare centres consistently and report recovery with numbers rather than anecdotes.
Visitors, not just residents
WhereThen's demographics are built from visitors' home locations, so you see who actually uses the town centre — including how far they travel — not just who happens to live nearby.
Evening and night-time economy
Hourly patterns show how your centre performs after 6pm, where the quiet zones are and whether evening-economy investment is pulling people in.
Reporting to members and the public
Clear charts and downloadable data make scrutiny committees, cabinet papers and public-facing reports straightforward — and keep the debate anchored to evidence.
What you get with WhereThen
Everything below is available self-serve in the platform — and as raw data or a bespoke report when you need it.
How busy each location is
Precise daily counts of pedestrians and non-pedestrians for any UK location in coverage — a true picture of the traffic a site actually receives.
When people visit
Hourly, daily and monthly visit patterns reveal peaks, dead spots and seasonality, so timing decisions rest on the real demand curve.
Who the visitors are
Census-based demographic profiles built from visitors' home locations — age, household composition, education and economic activity — for the people who actually visit, not just those who live nearby.
Compare and rank sites
Score any set of locations side by side — existing sites, prospects and competitor pitches — and see instantly which comes out on top.
Points of interest and catchment
See the competing and complementary businesses around each site, and how far visitors travel to reach it.
Take the data with you
Every chart is downloadable, and the underlying raw data is available when your own analysts or models need it.
Example scenario
A council evidences a regeneration scheme
A district council pedestrianises a market street as part of a town-centre regeneration programme. Local opinion is divided, and members want to know whether it worked.
Using WhereThen, the team baselines footfall for the twelve months before the scheme, then tracks the street and the wider centre afterwards. Weekend visits are up substantially, the early-evening curve has lifted, and the visitor catchment has widened to neighbouring postcodes.
The before-and-after evidence goes into the scrutiny committee report — and becomes the centrepiece of the council's next funding bid.
One consistent, objective measure across the whole programme: baseline, monitor, prove.
Work with us your way
WhereThen is more than a dashboard. Behind it is WhereData, a location-data company that can support you at whatever depth you need — from instant self-serve analytics to fully bespoke consultancy.
Self-serve platform
Instant footfall analytics in your browser. Search a location and see visitor volumes, visit timing and demographics in minutes — no data team required, and priced so smaller businesses can afford it.
Get 3 free searchesRaw footfall data
License the datasets behind the platform: hourly footfall and footfall-origin data for UK towns and cities, delivered ready for your own models, GIS tools and data warehouse.
Talk to us about dataBespoke analysis & insights
Our analysts answer your specific question — site shortlists, catchment reports, portfolio benchmarks, before-and-after impact studies — delivered as clear reports you can put in front of a board or committee.
Discuss a briefConsultancy
Work with the WhereData team on the harder problems: methodology, data integration, ongoing monitoring programmes and evidence for high-stakes location decisions.
Talk to an expertTalk to us about your town centre
One-off baseline reports, ongoing monitoring, or raw data for your own analysts — tell us what your programme needs and we'll shape the work around it.
Three free searches, anywhere in the UK. See real footfall for the locations you actually care about — no card required.