London sales have continued to grow ahead of the rest of the country with retail sales up 5.4 per cent in April, according to the BRC-KPMG London Retail Sales monitor.
This was helped by warmer weather than the same time last year and Easter falling in April. In the UK as a whole retail sales climbed 4.6 per cent.
The weaker pound has also continued to attract tourists to shops in the capital, particularly from Western Europe, although the trend for US shoppers attracted by the favourable exchange rate was less noticeable.
BRC director-general Stephen Robertson said: “Overall, London’s customers are proving more resilient to recession. Since the start of the year, London retail sales have consistently outperformed the country as a whole with average growth for the year so far of 5.7 per cent compared with almost no growth for the whole of the UK, and London continued that sort of performance into April.”
Sectors that were buoyed most by the warmer weather included clothing, footwear and outdoor leisure, although trading for furniture retailers remained challenging.
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