Fashion store sales drag down high street sales - BDO

Like-for-like retail sales on Britain's high streets were down 1.3% in May, according to a survey published on Friday.

The BDO High Street Sales Tracker found clothing sales were the culprit for the fall, falling by 3.6%, the fourth month out of five in 2017 where in-store sales have been negative.

Performances from other retail sub-sectors were positive, with lifestyle LFL sales up 3.9% for a sixth positive month in a row, homewares up 1.2% and non-store sales up 19.3%.

Homeware has posted positive results in three of the five months of the year so far, with sales in May well up in the first
two weeks of May, with softer results in the following two weeks against very strong figures last year.

The performance in May was based on the collated sales data sales from 85 non-food medium-sized retailers with circa 10,000 individual stores between them.