The financial challenge faced by households was evident in February 2024, with a sales flat vs February 2023, and Feb YTD 2024 sales remaining -3% behind Feb YTD 2023. However, a glimmer of optimism was provided by the fact that this was an improvement from January 2024 when sales declined annually by -4.9%.
Performance varied across the five most important retail sectors in February, with annual increases in sales towns and cities in Grocery (+4.4%) and Health and Beauty (+4.4%), General Retail (+2.6%) and Food & Drink (+2.5%) although only General Retail saw customer growth behind these numbers. Fashion continued to face challenging trading conditions in February with the greatest drop in sales from 2023 of any sector at -6.3%.
The average transaction value across all categories remained largely level with February last year (just -1.2% lower) and customer numbers also dropped only marginally over the year (by -0.2%) reflecting half term trips into town and city centres.
The fact that Easter is occurring in March this year, and dovetails with payday weekend, should hopefully deliver another much needed boost to high street sales next month.
The table above shows the average performance of a 62 towns and city centres, across a range of key Retail Spend metrics
This post was updated 15/04/2024.