There was another bleak release on Friday from the Office for National Statistics showing that UK retail sales are still struggling. The ONS said sales volumes are estimated to have fallen by 0.3% last month after a fall of 1.1% in September, a figure that had been revised from a slightly lower drop that had been estimated a few weeks ago. 

Those are month-on-month figures and they also showed that non-food stores sales volumes fell by 0.2% in October. That wasn’t as bad as the 2.1% fall in September, but another drop wasn’t exactly good news for the sector.

And non-store retailing (predominantly online retailers) sales volumes rose by only 0.8% following a fall of 2.4% in September.

Looking more deeply into the figures, volume sales were down 2.7% year on year, which is more bad news. As for value sales, the amount spent was down 0.1% compared to September. It was up 2.2% compared to a year ago, but inflation during the year has been running riot, so overall value sales were down when inflation was taken into account.

When compared to sales in February 2020 (which was the last month before Covid started to have an impact) total sales values were 16.9% higher, although volumes were down 3.1%. But even that almost-17% increase in values can’t be interpreted as good news, again because of inflation in the intervening almost-four years.

In fact, the ONS said that retail sales volumes last month were at their lowest level since February 2021 and back then there were widespread and extensive lockdown restrictions on non-essential retail in England, Scotland and Wales. 

So what’s behind all the bad news? Well, people were buying less fuel to power their cars as they stayed cautious about spending in general and also as bad weather kept them indoors. But food store sales also went back into decline. 

As for sales in non-food stores, volumes were at their lowest level since March 20 21, and the fall in total non-food store sales volumes came as the cost of living, reduced footfall and the wet weather all had a part to play.

Clothing stores specifically reported a 0.9% sales volume fall during October, although this was hardly a surprise given the warm weather earlier in the month that affected enthusiasm for autumn clothing and footwear.

Department stores also saw a drop, albeit only of 0.1%, with some retailers telling the ONS that this was because of another dip in consumer confidence. 

The category of ‘other’ non-food stores was the only sub-sector to register positive growth with sales volumes rising by 0.8%. This was because of a partial rebound from watches and jewellery stores, although we shouldn’t perhaps read too much into this given they saw a big fall in September. 

As for online retail, we’ve already seen that volumes edged up a little. And online sales values rose 5.1% year on year, although they were down 1.2% compared to the previous month. Department e-stores saw falls on both measures and while textile, clothing and footwear e-stores saw value sales up 8.8%, compared to a year ago volumes were down 2.5%, with inflation again accounting for that value increase.