ClickAJob News

Three interest rate rises in five months are yet to affect the positive mood on the high street, according to the British Retail Consortium (BRC).

Its monthly retail sales monitor, published in conjunction with accountancy firm KPMG, shows like-for-like annual growth of 3.3 per cent in February and three per cent growth on the December-February period.

These come despite the Bank of England's shock rate hike in January, which attempted to shock consumers into scaling back their spending to dampen upward inflationary pressures.

Today's figures are a "reasonably good set of results", according to BRC director general Kevin Hawkins.

He said: "Clothing and big-ticket categories in general, however, remain sluggish and growth remains heavily slanted towards the grocery sector. It would appear that the November and January rate increases have yet to work through to consumer spending."

Analysts have pointed to heavy price discounting as another headwind faced by shopkeepers, undermining growth figures.

But today's results from the BRC will come as good news as mixed results in December and January made the true state of the high street unclear.

"February's results reflect a continuation of the trend of late December and January – not a bad set of results on the face of it but the total growth of 5.6 per cent and like-for-like growth of 3.3 per cent must be taken in the context of a weak set of figures from February 2006," KPMG's head of retail, Helen Dickinson, said.