Conditions are toughening for customers and retailers as the crucial run-up to Christmas begins, said the British Retail Consortium (BRC).

The BRC said the Office for National Statistics’ (ONS) retail sales figures, published last week confirm the BRC’s findings that sales growth slowed sharply into September. But the three per cent year-on-year increase in sales values reported by ONS was still above the weak one per cent shown by the BRC’s figures.

Stephen Robertson, director general of the BRC, said: “With a number of major retailers reporting serious sales falls, the ONS’ claim that sales values are up three per cent on a year ago seems high. Our figure is just one per cent. Both results are well below inflation, meaning real-terms sales falls.

“The official figures rightly confirm overall sales growth is slowing and conditions toughening for customers and retailers as the crucial run-up to Christmas begins.

“With almost all sales growth confined to food many non-food retailers are under huge pressure. Not only are sales hard to come by but deep and widespread discounting is putting margins under tremendous pressure as costs rise. Even food sales growth is slowing as the rate of food price rises comes down,” he added.

“ONS’ claim that small retailers are doing dramatically better than larger ones is hard to believe.”

Commenting on differences between the ONS retail sales figures and the BRC’s Retail sales Monitor, Stephen Robertson added: “We note that the UK Statistics Authority has recommended the ONS publishes a margin or error for its retail figures in future and puts more emphasis on the long-term trend than, potentially volatile, month-to-month changes.”

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