Most local authorities know their town centres are changing. Far fewer have the data to prove it — or to act on it with confidence. Ashfield District Council decided to change that.
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TOWN CENTRES MONITORED
GIS
INTEGRATED WITH COUNCIL SYSTEMS
360 degrees
STREET LEVEL PEDESTRIAN INSIGHT
The challenge
Ashfield District Council monitors three main town centres in the East Midlands: Sutton-in-Ashfield, Kirkby-in-Ashfield, and Hucknall. The Economic Development and Tourism team had a clear mandate to support and regenerate those centres — but limited data to evidence performance or build the case internally.
What changed
By partnering with Visitor Insights and adopting the Terain platform, Ashfield gained access to granular pedestrian footfall data across all three town centres. The Street Footfall Heatmap in particular proved transformative, giving the team clear visualisation of where visitors move, linger, and drop off.
Importantly, Ashfield were also able to export this data and overlay it within their own GIS systems, making it easy to share insights across council teams in a familiar mapping environment.
“The ability to monitor high street footfall has become a useful tool in regenerating our town centres. We have found it really helpful to upload the Street Footfall Heatmap to our own base map and use this in presentations.” Gillian Bradley, Business Information Officer
What’s in the case study
The complete case study covers the full picture: the specific metrics Ashfield now uses to benchmark town centre performance, how the heatmap data is being applied in practice, and what this means for future regeneration planning across the district.
Read and Download full Case Study
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