British Retail Consortium (BRC) Like-For-Like Retail Sales measure

+0.6% y/y

  • expected +0.3% y/y, prior +0.6%

More:

spending in the last three months of 2017 +1.1 percent y/y

  • average annual growth rate of 1.7 percent for 2017 as a whole

"Growth in spending was in line with the average for the year. However, the divergence between growth in sales of food and non-food has never been so stark," BRC chief executive Helen Dickinson said.

  • Non-food sales fell by 1.4 percent year-on-year in the fourth quarter, the biggest drop since March 2009, while food sales grew by 4.2 percent, the biggest jump since June.

--

The "like-for-like" sales basis strips out changes in store size