Scorching summer weather enabled a raft of retail sectors to bask in the warm glow of sales growth in June.
The BRC-KPMG Retail Sales Monitor revealed an increase in like-for-like sales of 3 per cent, and 5.7 per cent overall. The hottest June since 1976 helped food, drink, clothing and footwear, but a slower housing market harmed sales of household products. London stores continued to suffer a decline in international and domestic tourists.
British Retail Consortium director general Bill Moyes said: 'The better than expected increase is good news, but no one should be too excited about one month's figures in isolation.'
However, the sheen from the data was dulled by decreased footfall in shopping centres at the beginning of July.
According to shopper monitor FootFall, the week beginning July 7 brought a 4.3 per cent week-on-week drop in shopper numbers at malls.
'People are buying items such as barbecues,' said FootFall marketing manager David Smyth. 'Other than that, I can't think of anything worse than having to wander round stores when it's very, very hot.'
But for the first week in July, Sainsbury's saw sales of ice cubes double on the same period last year.
Ice cream sales were up 50 per cent by volume, bottled water by 25 per cent and disposable barbecues by 90 per cent.
Safeway reported that on the weekend of July 12 to July 13, sales of burgers had trebled, while sales of fly-killer had increased five-fold.
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