A strong summer for Britain’s retailers came to an abrupt end in September as weaker demand for food hit supermarkets and dragged down spending overall.
The latest spending snapshot from the Office for National Statistics showed the volume of sales for shops and online businesses had dropped by 0.8%, twice the monthly fall analysts had been expecting.
September’s fall was not enough to outweigh rising activity in July and August, leaving sales for the quarter, a better guide to the underlying trend than one month’s data, up by 1.2%.
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