“Catastrophic” – Harvey’s CEO describes business impact of Halifax Town Centre roadworks

Latest town centre footfall data show Halifax business district footfall is down following £64m improvement plan

This year family-run Harvey’s of Halifax will celebrate 100 years in business, with over 75 of those years, trading on Commercial Street in Halifax. But, over the past two years business has taken a nosedive.

In the latest episode of Calderdale inside Out’s podcast, the CEO of Harvey’s, fourth generation owner Tracy Harvey, describes the impact of Halifax’s £64m town centre improvement scheme saying “It genuinely has been catastrophic for us. Two years is a long time for customers to change their habits and find other places to go.”

On Commercial Street, recorded footfall fell by almost a third between 2024 and 2025 – and the latest numbers show just a slight 5% recovery following the end of the roadworks at the top end of town.. And At Corn Market, the latest figures are showing 27% down from the previous year. Woolshops data is broadly flat with just a 0.7% increase year on year.

But Harveys isn't giving up. Despite depleted cash reserves, higher business rates and rising staff costs, the store has opened two new departments — and Tracy says she remains determined that the business will not only survive, but thrive again adding:

“I passionately believe in what we do as a business. I passionately believe in Halifax.”

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As the road scheme for Halifax is facing a rethink.

One Halifax business is counting the cost of two years of disruption.

It genuinely has been catastrophic for us.

Two years is a long time for customers to change their habits and find other places to go.

Recorded footfall is down, but they aren't giving up.

But I passionately believe in what we do as a business.

I passionately believe in Halifax.

You know, I'm determined to do everything I can to make sure that we not only survive, but start to thrive again.

Welcome to Calderdale.

Inside out.

If you, like me, you're of a certain age, you'll remember a time when Commercial street in Halifax was the beating heart of our town centre.

Buses collecting and dropping people off in George Square and Commercial street itself.

The Post Office, the iconic Halifax Building Society and Lloyds Bank.

And weekends at night.

Remember that back in the 80s, Halifax had over 30 light licenses.

We've got people flocking from the north of England.

Just have a night out.

In the facts.

2Am on Saturday morning, George Square just as busy as it was at two o'clock in the afternoon.

Now, that bit isn't relevant to our story today.

It's just a little bit of colour for you, but it does give a flavour of what a thriving place Halifax Town Centre used to be.

Now, obviously, I was around there when the Dean Clough Mills closed down and we had the creeping paralysis that caused that enormous supply chain in and around Calderdale to all but collapse.

And of course, we then had that backdrop of economic uncertainty that pervaded through the late 80s into the early 90s, the decades that followed.

There've been so many factors presenting huge challenges to the retail sector, especially not just in Halifax, but across the entire country.

We're going to be digging into those in a few minutes with my guest on the podcast today, Tracy Harvey, the fourth generation managing director of Harveys of Halifax.

But before we do that, let's talk about one of the biggest disruptors to town centre trading for decades.

Something which, as it turned out, was even more devastating than Covid.

And here to help is Rachel with an explanation of what's been happening in Halifax town centre.

And where have all the people gone?

Halifax has been living through roadworks for the best part of two years.

Roads closed, bus routes altered, traffic diverted.

All part of the multi million pound a629 project which promises eventually a better connected and more attractive town centre.

But what has been happening to the people who use it?

We've been looking at the latest footfall figures and the answer to how that pans out depends very much where in Halifax you're standing.

So let's take Commercial street home to Harvey's, one of Halifax's best known independent stores.

A year later, that fallen to around 484,000.

That's a drop of 32%.

That's almost a third now.

They show something significant happened to footfall on that street.

And then there's Cornmarket.

In August this year, recorded footfall was almost 27% lower than it had been 12 months earlier.

And if you put Commercial street and Cornmarket together, the Halifax Business Improvement District counters they recorded around 360,000 fewer movements.

That's a fall of just over 11%.

But if you walk a few hundred yards towards wool shops, the story changes again.

Across its five counters, annual footfall isn't down at all.

It's actually slightly up by 0.7%.

And even there, though, the different entrances tell different stories.

Market street is down, the Marks and Spencers entrance is down, but the entrance towards Peace hall is up.

Which, of course isn't too surprising given that they announced record attendance at their concerts this year.

So there isn't one simple Halifax footfall story.

There are different parts of the town sort of moving in different directions.

And these counters don't measure individual shoppers.

It's important to make that distinction.

They record people passing particular points.

And the Business improvement district and a wool shop systems measure slightly differently.

They also.

They don't tell us what people spent.

They don't record the shopper who decided getting to Halifax was simply too difficult and stayed at home.

And they don't prove that roadworks caused the falls we're seeing, although there is a very strong correlation.

But the figures matter, because increasing pedestrian footfall was one of the objectives of the A629 investment itself.

So, after tens of millions of pounds of investment, the question isn't simply whether Halifax will look better when all the cones finally disappear.

It's whether people will actually come and whether the businesses already here can survive the journey to get there.

See, this isn't just a story about how some road work stopped people coming to Halifax.

And the footfall counters.

Well, they don't lie.

There was a 33% drop on Commercial street between 24 and 25 and the Business Improvement District this year, according to the latest numbers.

They aren't improving, they are down.

No.

This is a story about people's lives and livelihoods and there is no better example than how the works in the town centre has impacted a business than Harvey's of Halifax.

For those of you who don't know, Harvey's is retailing royalty in Halifax, one of those very rare breeds, an independent department store who this year will be celebrating 100 years in business.

They're one of the biggest employers in the town centre, providing around 100 retail jobs.

This drop off coincided with the start of the works to the A629 in Halifax Town centre.

Now, make no mistake, if you're listening to this episode and you've never visited Halifax, well, Harvey's is a little bit like the Ravens at the Tower of London.

Not only an integral part of Halifax from a cultural and economic perspective, but almost certainly a bellwether for the future of retailing in the town centre.

I met Tracey Harvey in the cafe at Harvey's and we started off with a little bit of a history lesson.

Fourth generation business.

Yeah.

Not myself.

Yeah.

We are one of a very small club of 0.3%, I believe, of businesses that actually make it to the fourth generation.

I think that's the right statistic.

That is not very many.

Wow.

Yeah, wow.

So you've seen the ebb and flow of Halifax?

Yes, I have.

Halifax will always be home, though, to me.

I love it.

Love everything about it.

People have always called my father before me Mr. Halifax and they always say that's, you know, at his funeral, Mr. Halifax.

Well, I definitely take after him in that respect in as much as my brother moved away to Germany 12 years ago.

He lives out there with his family and I could never move from this place.

I love it.

Town centre.

I grew up in Halifax, like you, and I remember Commercial Street.

I remember Nickel and Brown and Coyles.

I remember the Illeds bank on the corner, the Post Office, the heart.

Commercial street was the heartbeat of Halifax.

It was what's happened.

The big thing that's happened is the way that services are not on the high street anymore, I think.

All the banks had a presence on Commercial street, as did the Post Office.

And it's where people came to do their business because you couldn't do it at home, online or any other way.

And obviously that's the big change.

The town centre itself from a retail point of view shifted and the wool shops became the sort of centre of that and Market Street.

So, you know, there's a lot of big picture change.

There's a lot of national, you know, world, world changes that have impacted the world of retail.

So you're really on an uphill trajectory, you know, you're pushing for quite a number of years.

Yes.

And then of course we had Covid.

We did.

I never thought I would look back at Covid with such fondness because that is when customers actually tried so hard to support indies and local.

I did it.

You know, we all tried to support each other and we would literally come into work, there'd be me and one colleague at work and we were taking phone calls from customers that didn't want to order from us online.

They wanted to talk to us and say, hope you're all right.

We'd take all the orders in the morning, we'd pack them and then we would get in our cars and we'd go out and just travel.

Everywhere around Calderdale people wanted to support us and it was just, it was brilliant.

That level of support came out of it in a really strong position, actually.

A really strong position.

But then everything else has hit since then.

Covid was easy.

So Covid was easy compared to the roadworks.

Oh,.

Compared to, yeah, post Covid.

And we were just recovering.

We were just recovering and we were doing okay.

And you know, as much as any town centre needs investment and development and, you know, we need to move forward, it genuinely has been catastrophic for us.

People found it extremely difficult to access the town centre, whether that be on a bus in their cars and our footfall went down significantly over that period.

It was a two year project.

I think if it would have been three Four, even six months, we would have coped a lot better.

But because it was two years of disruption, we were crossing our fingers hoping that business would pop back to normal.

And two years is a long time for customers to change their habits and find other places to.

Well, it's always said, isn't it?

You know, it takes 65 days to change a habit.

That was a lot of 65 days.

You had two years of people being able to change habits.

Yeah, I've seen the numbers just from the Culverdell's own data that they produce, and I think Commercial street dropped by.

A third in terms of overall, it was averaged out about a third, but there were some weeks prior to Christmas where it dropped to nearly 50% from the previous year.

So absolutely significant.

And yes, the world of retail is changing, but that this was a direct comparison, like, on, like, figures with football and trade and, you know, the vast majority of the reasoning was the car park, the road works and the evidence of what we were being told on a daily basis by our customers who couldn't get to us.

So you say catastrophic.

What does that mean for your business as you're sitting here today?

Unfortunately, the future is probably as uncertain as it's ever been, because what has happened over the last two years is a lot of the cash reserves have had to be used up.

There is absolutely light on the horizon and we are absolutely not giving up.

This business is 100 years old and, you know, I'm determined to do everything I can to make sure that we not only survive but start to thrive again.

We were just starting to thrive again from COVID This will be a harder and is a harder recovery because of, you know, there's a lot of external factors, business rates being a major one, staff costs being another major, major concern.

So it is uncertain in the respect that we haven't got the cushioning that we did have, but we're keeping going.

We opened two new departments last month.

You know, if I was thinking, you know, there's no future, I'm going to pack it in, I wouldn't have invested the money to do that.

But I passionately believe in what we do as a business.

I passionately believe in Halifax.

We've got an amazing, loyal customer, an amazing, loyal staff team, and that's what I'm doing it for.

That's why I'm not sleeping at night, because they're the important ones and that's why I feel a duty to do the best I can.

That's Tracy Harvey, MD, of Harvey's of Halifax.

And here's a plea from me.

Tracy is doing everything she can to keep jobs in Halifax important jobs, and to keep Harvey's afloat.

She's facing some significant headwinds.

Now, you can help Harvey's stay in Halifax by paying them a visit and buying something.

Go and have a cup of coffee in their restaurant, buy birthday presents, some of your Christmas shopping.

We're very much in use it or lose it territory, so let's take the use it option, shall we?

And also, before you go, I can't talk about Halifax Town Centre without mentioning the unique and innovative approach being taken by the team that run the Westgate shopping area.

It's a covered shopping area in Halifax which has bands, revelry and all kinds of madness happening on a Saturday afternoon.

Well done.

We don't have footfall data for that area of town, but I'm sure on the weekends at least, it's going great guns.

Thanks for listening.

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