The zero-hardware measurement product comes to market at a time when councils are increasing their focus on tracking footfall across high-streets and town centres as part of the Re-opening High Streets Safely initiative from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF).

Huq’s Community Vision is an interactive product designed for Economic Development and town centre managers and gives a highly accurate, real-time measure of footfall across high-streets and town centres.  Community Vision is powered by Huq’s proprietary platform, built on its first party mobile location data, which makes it much more than a footfall monitor. Instead it combines a range of mobility-led insights to support councils’ strategic decision-making.

“The decisions that local councils make are coming under scrutiny like never before.  The pre-pandemic playbook, local knowledge, and conventional footfall sensors fail to provide them with sufficient visibility on how their centres are being used. The pandemic has triggered so much volatility in the UK economy that there is a need for detailed, real-time data to support both short term and longer term strategic decisions that are being made,” says Conrad Poulson, CEO at Huq. 

“Local Authorities are under real pressure to make their areas attractive places for businesses, workers, retailers, shoppers, residents, tourists and others. Thinking about the kinds of businesses or other entities to bring into vacant units and what sort of high street to build post Covid means understanding the kinds of people who come to the local areas and what motivates them to do so.” 

The product also provides measures of footfall density - where visitors cluster on the high-street - and live catchment area mapping. This allows local councils to make urgent decisions about Covid marshalls or safety signage as the UK’s high streets reopen for business, and learn about who is visiting their centres from where. For all outputs, socio-economic and demographic attributes are included to provide additional insight about human activity in UK towns and cities.