Shop price data shows food inflation rising in April as labour costs rise

The index monitors five metrics: overall shop price inflation, including food and non-food, and food inflation, including fresh and ambient food.

These figures show that despite overall shop price inflation on a slight decline of 0.4 percentage points from March, combined food inflation has adversely increased by at least 0.2% in the same period.

The most significant change in inflation was in ambient food, which saw a 3.7% average price increase from March.

British Retail Consortium chief executive Helen Dickinson said: “Everyday essentials such as bread, meat and fish all increased prices in the month. This comes as retailers face a mountain of new employment costs in the form of higher employer national insurance contributions and increased NLM.”

The British Retail Consortium is the lead trade association for UK retail, measuring economic changes in the retail sector, the largest sector in the UK which makes up over 5% of British GDP.

Price changes in retail, however slight, can affect the jobs of over 5.7 million people who work in the sector.

NielsenIQ head of retailer and business insight Mike Watkins said: “Shoppers continue to benefit from lower shop prices from a year ago, but prices are slowly rising across supply chains, so retailers will be looking at ways to mitigate this as far as possible.”

“We expect customers to remain cautious on discretionary spending and for the late Easter to help stimulate sales.”