So much for ‘dry’ and ‘no buy’ January. The UK public seems to have thoroughly rebelled against efforts to persuade them to work off the excesses of the festive season. In particular, we seem to have stuffed our faces somewhat.
The retail sales figures put out by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) this morning show that the volume of sales in food stores rose by 5.6 per cent in January relative to December. That helped overall retail sales volumes to rise by 1.7 per cent, compared with a 0.6 per cent fall in December. Chancellor Rachel Reeves has good reason to feel relieved. Until a week ago it seemed as if Britain was heading for a recession. That looks a lot less likely now that retail sales seem to have picked up and last week’s GDP figures suggest that the economy expanded by 0.1 per cent in the last three months of 2024.
When money is tight, shoppers have decided they would rather see what they are buying first
Yet not all is well in retailing.
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