Extreme heat is beginning to affect where consumers shop, which channels they use and how much stores cost to operate, turning weather from a merchandising consideration into a wider retail resilience issue.
UK high-street footfall fell 3.8% year on year in July, according to Sensormatic data for the British Retail Consortium (BRC), following a 6.2% decline in June.
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Exceptionally hot weather was likely to have been a significant factor, according to the BRC, although it was not the only pressure on store traffic. Six of the first seven months of 2026 recorded lower footfall than a year earlier.
The geographical differences were significant. London footfall fell 5.3% in July and England recorded a 3% decline. Scotland, by contrast, increased 2.7% and Northern Ireland 2.6%, while Wales was unchanged.
The BRC partly attributed the divergence to differences in temperatures across the UK.
But the figures point to a wider challenge than a temporary reduction in shopper numbers. Extreme heat can affect store traffic, transport patterns, product demand, energy consumption and the balance between physical and digital retail.
For retailers, that makes heat increasingly relevant to decisions ranging from inventory and staffing to store infrastructure and capital investment.
Heat changes where consumers shop
The effect of July’s conditions was not uniform across different types of retail location.
Overall UK footfall declined 2.1% year on year. High streets recorded a 3.8% fall and shopping centre traffic declined 1.4%. Retail parks moved in the opposite direction, with footfall increasing 1.2%.
The figures do not establish that one retail format is inherently more resilient to extreme heat than another. They do, however, highlight how weather can affect different parts of a physical retail estate in different ways.
Transport may be one factor.
Helen Dickinson, chief executive of the BRC, said London’s particularly weak performance reflected the impact of high temperatures on journeys into the capital, with travelling on hot trains and the London Underground becoming less attractive.
Other factors may also influence how individual locations perform during periods of extreme heat, including car access, parking, the length and purpose of shopping trips and the availability of climate-controlled environments.
For retailers, understanding those differences could become increasingly important when assessing store performance. Weather may need to be considered alongside demographics, local competition and catchment characteristics when evaluating individual locations.
Demand moves between categories and channels
Extreme heat does not necessarily mean consumers stop spending.
UK retail sales volumes increased 1% in June, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), despite weaker physical footfall. The ONS reported stronger demand in areas including clothing and non-store retail, while retailers also benefited from increased demand for products such as fans and outdoor goods.
That illustrates one of the complications heat creates for retailers: it can weaken demand in one part of the business while stimulating it elsewhere.
Summer clothing, cooling equipment and cold food and drink can benefit from higher temperatures, while other categories may face more difficult trading conditions.
Demand can also shift between sales channels. ONS data for Great Britain showed that online sales increased 2.8% month on month in June and accounted for 29.4% of total retail sales, the highest proportion since April 2021.
For omnichannel retailers, this creates another operational consideration. Digital sales and fulfilment capacity may need to absorb changes in demand when weather conditions make consumers less willing to visit physical stores.
Weather forecasting has long informed merchandising decisions, particularly in categories such as fashion, grocery and home improvement. More frequent periods of extreme heat could make it relevant to a wider range of operational decisions.
Retailers may need greater flexibility to adjust inventory, promotions, staffing and fulfilment capacity as weather conditions change.
Store resilience becomes a capital issue
Changing consumer behaviour is only one side of the heat equation. Stores themselves have to function during increasingly high temperatures.
Retailers need to maintain comfortable environments for customers and employees while operating refrigeration, lighting, technology and other temperature-sensitive equipment. During prolonged periods of extreme heat, cooling requirements can place additional pressure on energy consumption and operating costs.
Dickinson said climate change was producing “more and more extreme temperatures in the UK”, prompting retailers to invest in measures including air conditioning and more efficient refrigeration.
That creates a potential trade-off. Cooling can make stores more resilient to extreme temperatures, but greater reliance on air conditioning can increase electricity demand. Retailers therefore need to consider cooling capacity alongside energy efficiency, emissions targets and the resilience of store infrastructure.
For businesses operating hundreds or thousands of locations, the issue extends beyond buying additional cooling equipment ahead of the next heatwave.
HVAC systems, refrigeration, insulation, building materials, energy management and store design all have investment cycles measured in years or decades. Retailers making those investments today therefore need to consider how changing weather conditions could affect their stores over the lifetime of the equipment and buildings involved.
The issue also raises wider questions about capital allocation. Retailers routinely decide which stores to refurbish, which leases to renew and where capital expenditure should be directed. Climate resilience is increasingly another variable in those calculations.
The challenge can be particularly significant for businesses with geographically diverse estates. Climate exposure can vary substantially between cities and regions, making location-level assessments more relevant than a single approach across an entire market.
The BRC has also highlighted the policy implications of adaptation. Dickinson argued that the UK’s business rates system can discourage retailers from investing in improvements such as air conditioning and energy-efficient equipment because those investments can increase the rateable value of properties.
That is primarily a UK policy issue, but the underlying investment question is relevant internationally: how much should retailers spend today to prepare physical estates for weather conditions that may become increasingly common over the coming decades?
The precise impact of extreme heat will vary between markets. Consumers in countries accustomed to high temperatures may respond differently from shoppers in markets where stores, transport networks and buildings were designed for milder conditions.
The business questions, however, are increasingly similar. Retailers need to understand which stores and formats are most exposed to extreme temperatures, whether cooling and energy systems can cope with higher peak demand, how quickly merchandising and inventory can respond to weather-driven changes, and whether digital and fulfilment operations can accommodate shifts in demand.
Those considerations cut across functions that retailers have traditionally managed separately.
Property teams determine store investment. Operations manage staffing and energy. Merchandising teams respond to product demand. Ecommerce teams manage digital capacity and fulfilment.
Extreme weather can affect all of them at the same time.
Heatwaves are therefore becoming more than isolated trading events to manage when they occur. They are increasingly a scenario that retailers need to incorporate into estate planning, operational resilience and omnichannel strategy.
Weather forecasting has always helped retailers decide what consumers might buy next. In a hotter and more volatile climate, it may increasingly help determine where consumers shop, how stores operate and where retailers invest.
