London’s largest shopping centre, Westfield Stratford City has reported that this year it expects to outdo its 2012 footfall record, the year the Olympics were held and John Burton, head of development said this will continue to grow.

Opened in 2011, the shopping centre has welcomed retailers from the UK as well as the rest of the world and even had some UK-first openings including American Eagle and Lindex. John Burton said: “The year of the Olympics, we were generating around 47 million (footfall), which was quite insane.”

“In 2015 we were already back to 47 million, and this year we continued to grow, so you should expect this year to exceed that Olympic number.”

“Those people that believe it was a one-off thing really don’t understand that the way this whole part of London is coming together.”

Mr Burton added: “You can look back and say what a key role key role Westfield Stratford city played during the 2012 Olympics.”

“It was an opportunity to make wholesale change to an area that had a particularly poor reputation, and was suffering financially.

“The pace of change here means this is not a one-time story. We’ve certainly got a lot more office development, residential development, so there’s more to come.

With the Rio 2016 Olympics only nine days away, Burton said he was confident the UK retail industry would benefit from it as it did during the recent Euro Tournament.

“Retailers are good at managing events, they’ll recognise an opportunity.”