Retailers in London bucked the grim trend confronting high street stores across Britain to register a potent rise in sales last month, an industry survey indicated yesterday.

The value of goods sold in the capital, measured on a like-for-like basis that strips out the effect of changes in retailers' floorspace, jumped by 6.2 per cent in July from levels at the same time last year, the British Retail Consortium (BRC) reported.

The sharp rise in London sales was in stark contrast to a 0.9 per cent drop for Britain as a whole in the BRC's recent national survey. The consortium said that the strong growth in sales was still weaker than the heady 12.9 per cent year-on-year increase recorded last July.

However, its figures showed that trading conditions in the capital were consistently outstripping those in the rest of the country. In June, the value of sales rose by 9 per cent on a year earlier, compared with a 0.4 per cent drop for the UK as a whole.

Between January and July, London sales rose by an average of 5.9 per cent year-on-year, compared with 0.2 per cent for the UK. The BRC said that London trading in recent weeks was being boosted by “the usual summer increase” in visits by tourists from the Middle East, while the strength of the euro was also luring Western European shoppers to the city.

Food sales were particularly strong in London last month, the survey findings indicated, but the BRC said that trading in clothing and footwear, as well as for big-ticket items such as furniture and large electrical goods, was weaker, with the latter categories hit by the slump in the housing market.

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