UK Shoppers Spending Cautiously

According to the retail bulletin, UK consumers are still spending despite fears that a successive interest rate rise would keep them away from the shops. Retail sales in the UK during September increased by 2 per cent on a like-for-like basis, according to the latest BRC/KPMG sales monitor, with total year-on-year growth of 4.6 per cent.

On a three-month comparison, the growth rate from 1.7 per cent in August to 1.5 per cent in September on a like-for-like basis, and from 4.2 per cent to 4.1 per cent in total sales. Helen Dickinson of KPMG said: "The resilience of the UK consumer really is quite remarkable. Consumer confidence has taken its share of blows in recent times but just keeps bouncing back. Every time we predict that consumer confidence might finally be about to hit the floor, it confounds us all and does exactly the opposite.

"A 2 per cent increase in the like-for-like growth figure for September is not bad at all, considering where we were at the end of August, and is much stronger than most commentators were expecting. "Children's clothing and footwear had a strong month with a late surge in the back-to-school market. Home accessories also showed improved trading. Such resilience is crucial as the volumes increase as we are already in the run-up to the most critical trading period of the year."