Retail sales up three months on the trot

16 Feb '06

2 min read

The British Retail Consortium reports that in Central London the Retail Sales during January were 6.5 percent higher, on a like-for-like basis, than in January 2005, when sales had risen only 0.1 percent.

Sales have now risen for three consecutive months after a four-month decline following the July bombings.

The three-month trend rate of growth improved to a 4.8 percent boost from a 1.9 percent decrease in December.

Footfall strengthened further, in contrast to the decline for the UK as a whole, as clearance sales and promotions continued to attract shoppers. Sales and discounts benefited clothing, accessories and men's shoes, but homewares continued to struggle.

London sales once again outperformed UK sales, for the third consecutive month, after four months of substantially larger declines than in UK sales.

Kevin Hawkins, LRC Director, comments that this month's results represent another impressive performance by central London's retailers, particularly given the poor figures for the rest of the UK. The results show the largest gain since March 2004.

This correlates with the recent recovery in customer footfall which has in turn increased by 5.8 percent, driven mainly by discounting. However, January's figures are against a weak comparative of 0.1 percent from January 2005. Next month's results should give us a better view of the underlying trends.

Helen Dickinson, Head of Retail, KPMG, comments that this is another set of impressive results for the capital - central London has outperformed the rest of the UK for the third month in a row and the gap between the two sets of like-for-like figures has widened.

Although these results are on the back of weak comparatives they do show an ongoing trend of bringing the capital back to more realistic trading levels following the many challenges of recent years.

British Retail Consortium

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