VISITORS to Poole High Street and Bournemouth’s town centre have dropped by between 20 and 30 per cent over a year, it has been revealed.

But at Poole’s Dolphin Centre and at Castlepoint figures suggest that numbers are up.

The news comes as retailers brace themselves for a predicted VAT rise from 17.5 per cent to 20 per cent in today’s emergency Budget.

Recorded visitors to Poole High street were down 28 per cent in May compared to 2009, and down 20 per cent in April.

Roger Parker, Bournemouth town centre manager, told the town’s Chamber of Trade this month that footfall is down there too, adding: “May produced some dismal trade figures for many high street retailers.”

Poole town centre manager Richard Randle-Jones acknowledged that Poole, like high streets elsewhere, was experiencing a drop in visitors.

He also said bad weather was a big factor in keeping people off the High Street, still smarting from the loss of Woolworths more than a year ago.

But he insisted the figures were not necessarily indicative of the true picture – and could have been skewed by a new market stall blocking part of the field of vision for a camera used to count visitor footfall.

He added: “July and August is our busiest time of the year and we expect things to improve.”

At Poole’s Dolphin Shopping Centre, footfall cameras showed visitor numbers were up by 12 per cent on average this year compared to last.

Bournemouth’s shopper numbers are understood to be down by a similar level to Poole.

Roger Parker told Bournemouth chamber that good days cannot compensate for the bad days – and the bad days are worse than those of previous years.

He put the large variations down to the weather.

He told the Echo: “Every town centre and shopping mall in the country is recording lower footfall that is symptomatic of the economic cycle we are going through at the moment.

He added: “It’s survival of the fittest, with some being more adept at driving customers back in their store and hanging on to their customers.”

At Castlepoint, where car numbers are recorded, centre manager Peter Matthews said they were up two per cent in the first quarter, and three per cent so far in with June compared with 2009.