High street retailers benefited from a jump in consumer spending over the Easter bank holiday weekend, according to industry figures showing an increase in footfall and sales despite the cost of living crisis.
Data collected by doorway sensors at thousands of shops across the UK showed footfall increased by 7% compared with Easter 2023 over the four days from Good Friday to Easter Monday, while the value of sales measured by debit card transactions increased by a similar amount.
It comes amid hopes that Britain’s retail sector is emerging from a protracted soft patch as households cut back their spending amid the highest levels of inflation for four decades – contributing to the UK’s slide into recession last year.
Separate figures from the British Retail Consortium and the accountancy firm KPMG released last week showed sales rose by 3.5% in March compared with the equivalent month a year earlier, amid the first increase in sales above inflation since the early days of the cost of living crisis.
Inflation as measured by the consumer prices index stood at 3.4% in February and markets expect it to have fallen to about 3.1% in March when official figures are published on Wednesday.
The latest snapshot from Rendle Intelligence and Insights, a consultancy firm, showed the increase in Easter spending was driven by health and beauty, general retail, and fashion.
Diane Wehrle, the Rendle chief executive, said the sales increase may have reflected consumers holding back from spending earlier in March as they saved up for Easter.
“[This] reflects the ongoing challenges on household budgets, and suggests that peaks in customer activity are even more likely to be focused around peak trading periods than they were previously,” she said. Footfall over the course of the month fell by 1.3% compared with March 2023, while spending across UK towns and cities rose by just 0.2%.
“While there was an uplift in footfall and spend over the Easter weekend, this may in part have been a case of ‘robbing Peter to pay Paul’, as a comparison with footfall and spend over the month of March as a whole clearly revealed that consumers had saved their budgets for the bank holiday weekend.”
