Record levels of customers at the Swan Centre in Eastleigh

The Swan Centre in Eastleigh is booming and hitting the highest number of customers yet.

This year’s footfall records show the town centre shopping mall has just overtaken last year’s 5.5million shoppers with a remaining five busy shopping weeks to Christmas.

Bosses are expected to have had seven million shoppers and an additional one million at the new leisure facilities by the end of the year.

The event to launch the Christmas trade in the town ripped up the record books with 34,192 people coming into the Swan Centre in just one day.

The huge crowd turning up to see Santa and his elves handing out free chocolates while Clown Bluey and stilt-walking Professor Crumb rode astride a reindeer and entertained children with their comical antics. Titan the Robot and farm yard animals were a big attraction outside.

Centre manager, and Town Centre Partnership chairman, Dee Buffone, said: “It has exceeded all expectations, it is wonderful.

“With times being tight people start to shop locally and I think some are only just realising what the Swan Centre and Eastleigh have to offer, we have the right balance of local and national shops.

“There has been an increase in upmarket businesses coming to Eastleigh such as Prezzo, the cinema, the new delicatessen and the wine bar and I think this is drawing people in from Chandler’s Ford and other areas, who may not have thought the town had much for them in the past.

“Eastleigh, and the Swan Centre, are on the up, and I think the community spirit in working towards this has played a big part.”

Figures – which are recorded manually and by overhead cameras – have been rising for a year and a half so now daily numbers are on average about 17,000.