UK retail sales fell a worse-than-expected 3.7% in December from November as people completed their Christmas shopping earlier and the Omicron Covid variant deterred consumers, according to official data released on Friday.
The Office for National Statistics said non-food stores sales volumes fell by 7.1% in December after strong sales in November, adding that Omicron, which increased rapidly during December, “was reported by some retailers as impacting retail footfall”.
Compared with December 2020, sales volumes were down by 0.9%.
The overall fall compared with monthly growth of 0.8% and 1.0% in October and November 2021. Economists had expected a fall of 0.6% for December.
The proportion of retail sales online rose slightly to 26.6% in December from 26.3% in November, substantially higher than the 19.7% in February 2020 before the coronavirus pandemic.
