First recorded two month fall in retail sales

Food and drink was the only sector to show sales up on a year ago. Despite extensive heavy discounting, clothing and footwear, furniture and big-ticket homewares fell further below year-earlier levels.

Discounts and promotions continued but often failed to tempt customers unless they perceived value or really needed the product.

Non-food non-store sales in November were 9.5% higher than a year ago. As with store sales, this was worse than in October, when sales were 16.6% up on a year ago.

Stephen Robertson, Director General, British Retail Consortium, said, “The numbers speak for themselves – these are clearly tough times. In the 14 years of this survey we have never recorded two consecutive months of total sales falls. Like-for-like sales have now fallen in eight out of the last nine months. All sectors are down apart from food and drink.

"Retailers will be hoping that customers have been putting off Christmas shopping - not cancelling it."
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