Shoppers continued to put discretionary spending on hold last month, depriving high street sales of any meaningful gain from warmer spring weather and Mother’s Day.
The latest BDO high street sales tracker showed like-for-like in-store sales rose by 4.8% in March, but it was not enough to rebound from the dire performance a year earlier when the “Beast from the East” cold spell caused a 10.1% drop.
BDO said the March figures had wrapped up a disastrous first quarter of trading for retailers.
