August 2022 may be the month in which the cost-of-living crisis finally caught up with city centre retail.
The recovery of city centres after lockdown has lagged national trends for retail. City centre retail recovered more slowly from lockdowns than online and local retail.
But until July 2022, city centre retail sales grew even as the ONS was reporting that national retail sales shrank.
According to the ONS, retail sales in the three months to July 2022 fell by 1.2% compared to the previous three months.
By contrast, city centre retail sales grew by 9% over the same period, as people came back to city centres.
However, city centre sales declined by 3% from July to August 2022 (ONS figures are not available at the time of writing).
This is highly unusual as August is normally the strongest retail month of the summer.
The chart below compares city centre retail sales for each month of 2022 with same month of 2019.
The chart shows sales with and without travel & accommodation. This is because city centres are heavily exposed to people’s willingness to travel and to risk covid infection.
It was not until concerns about Omicron subsided in April that city centre sales recovered to the same Year-on-3-Year level.
By this time, the ONS was reporting a trend of declining retail sales which started in the summer of 2021.
But it was not until July that sales levels including travel & accommodation recovered to the level of the same month in 2019.
From a Year-on-3-Year perspective, August’s sales decline was almost twice as steep as the headline figure of -3%. There was a 5% decline for all sectors, and a 6% decline excluding travel.
September’s data will help to confirm whether this is a trend or a blip.
The data in this article is sourced from a data-set of anonymised debit and credit card transactions. Data has been analysed from 62 city centres across Great Britain and covers transactions from 10 retail sectors (consumer services, entertainment, fashion, food & drink, general retail, grocery, health & beauty, household, travel & accommodation and vehicles).