New Year sales lure shoppers back to high street as sales grow after disappointing Christmas, figures show

Price cutting brought shoppers flooding back to the high street last month when retail sales grew by one per cent, official figures revealed today.

Analysts had been expecting only 0.2 per cent growth in January after a largely disappointing Christmas.

They said the figures suggested shoppers were focusing their spending on months when the most sales are on, as the figure for November — when Black Friday takes place — had also been strong.

The data from the Office for National Statistics showed a particularly strong performance from the clothing sector with sales up 2.1 per cent, and supermarkets, where the 1.2 per cent spike in food sales was the strongest for a January since 2005.

Economists said the steady rise in real wages in recent months had encouraged consumers to spend more freely.

Thomas Pugh, UK economist at forecasters Capital Economics, said: “Whilst this is a rare bit of good news for the economy there are a number of reasons not to get carried away.

"First, the jump in clothing sales was probably driven by stronger discounting as prices fell by 0.9 per cent year on year, which is unlikely to be continued.

“Second, household goods volumes fell by 4.4 per cent month on month, which indicates that Brexit uncertainty and the subdued housing market are still having an impact on sales of the bigger items.

"That said, stronger retail sales do suggest that consumers are more resilient to the Brexit uncertainty than we had feared.”