Sunny spring weather sent shoppers flocking to supermarkets and specialists such as butchers, bakers and alcohol outlets last month, fuelling the strongest quarterly jump in retail sales in Great Britain in almost four years.
Retail sales volumes rose by 1.2% in April, well above City forecasts of an increase of between 0.2% and 0.4%, marking the fourth straight month of sales growth.
The figures indicate that UK households splashed out on barbecues and holiday gatherings as they enjoyed the sunniest and third-warmest April on record, with just over half the normal rainfall, according to the Met Office.
The Office for National Statistics said that over the three months to the end of April sales rose by 1.8%, compared with the November to January period, marking the largest quarterly rise since July 2021.
The strong growth came despite the ONS revising down the 0.4% rise it had estimated in March to only 0.1%.
“Sunny skies and warm temperatures helped boost retail sales in April with strong trading across most sectors,” said Hannah Finselbach, a senior statistician at the ONS. “After a poor couple of months, food sales bounced back with supermarkets reporting robust sales, while it was also a positive month for butchers and bakers, alcohol and tobacco stores.”
The strongest growth was in food stores, with sales soaring by 3.9% last month, mostly recovering the declines of February and March. Department stores registered a 2.8% increase in sales, while sales in household goods stores rose by 2.1%.
“Other” non-food stores, such as sports and games retailers and secondhand shops, recorded the steepest decline at 3.1%.
In clothing, textile and footwear stores, which experienced the strongest growth in March, sales fell by 1.8% in April compared with the month before – once adjusted for seasonal changes including the timing of Easter.
However, retail analysts said these “seasonally adjusted” figures masked a surge in actual spending on fashion during the sunny spell when compared with a year before – with high streets benefiting while online trade lost out.
“While grocery, home and garden products were the biggest beneficiaries compared with March – no surprise given the later timing of school holidays – even fashion and other speciality retailers saw year-on-year growth,” said Jacqueline Windsor, the head of retail at advisory firm PwC.
“Fashion retailers saw their first quarter of year-on-year growth since August 2023 as shoppers rushed to refresh their spring-summer wardrobes to take advantage of the good weather.”
Erin Brookes, European retail and consumer lead at Alvarez & Marsal said the better than expected sales figures combined with more positive consumer confidence data, could indicate that the strong start to the year is likely to continue.
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“Retailers will be hoping that this positive momentum holds in the face of a challenging environment,” she said. “The sector has been the main target of a wave of cyber-attacks on major brands like M&S and Harrods, and retailers are still calibrating the potential impact of US tariffs on their businesses, although the new UK-EU deal is a positive development.”
Windsor agreed that retailers would be “hoping that this current trading is no flash in the pan”.
“In the short term, some of April’s performance may have pulled forward sales from later in the spring, while rising inflation and the prospect of slower interest rate cuts risk eating into shoppers’ spending power later in the year,” she said.
Potential signs of difficulties ahead came in figures from advisory firm BDO’s high street sales tracker, which monitors a selection of mid-sized retailers with a focus on fashion chains. It showed a slight drop in sales last week compared with the same period a year before with online trade doing particularly badly.
Matt Dalton, the consumer sector leader at the Forvis Mazars consultancy, said: “While we remain optimistic, we believe that consumers may adopt a more cautious approach to spending in the months ahead. Inflation spiked in April, wage growth is slowing, and consumer confidence is falling. Overall, we expect sales to rise, albeit at a more moderate pace than in the first four months of the year.”
