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Reuters Published
August 8, 2025
British retailers suffered from heavy rain in July on top of the impact of high inflation with sales growth dropping to an 11-month low, two surveys showed on 8 August.
The British Retail Consortium (BRC) said retail sales values rose by 1.5% compared with July last year, less than half the 12-month average growth rate of 3.9% and down from this year's peak of 5.2% from February.
The data is not adjusted for inflation so July's small rise in spending represented a fall in terms of sales volumes.
Britain's consumers have so far largely weathered the hit to their spending power from last year's surge in inflation and the Bank of England steadily raising interest rates, but analysts expect the toll to mount in the coming months.
The BRC said clothing and footwear retailers, which normally get a boost in summer, saw sales drop, contributing to a 0.5% fall in overall non-food sales in the three months to July.
Consumers have largely coped with the cost-of-living squeeze so far but "stubbornly high inflation coupled with rapidly rising interest rates will test their ability and willingness to keep on spending for the rest of this year," Paul Martin, the UK Head of Retail at KPMG, which sponsors the survey, said.
The BRC said like-for-like retail sales, a measure favoured by equity analysts which adjusts for changes in retail space, increased by 1.8% in July, its slowest growth since last October and half the 12-month average of 3.6%.
Separate data from Barclays painted a similarly weak picture with consumer spending on debit and credit cards growing by 4% in July in annual terms, slowing from 5.4% in June.
Clothing retailers were hampered by the unseasonal weather in July, and so fell back into decline (-3.1%). This comes as six in 10 of those cutting back on discretionary purchases to cope with rising household bills say they are reining in new clothes and accessories purchases.
The back-to-school period is not expected to reverse this decline, with only 42% of parents of school age children planning to buy brand new items this year. Instead, many parents will be buying second-hand uniforms online (23%), or sourcing items from families with older children who have outgrown theirs (23%). Three in 10 parents are also planning to give away their children’s old uniform to families that can’t afford new items.
Additional reporting by Sandra Halliday