UK retail sales slow in September, ONS says

UK retail sales fell 0.3% last month against August, although they still racked up their 18th month in a row of year-on-year growth, official data showed.Month-on-month sales fell 0.3% but year-on-year sales rose 2.7%, according to the data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS).The underlying pattern continued to show an improvement with the rolling quarter-on-quarter growth rate at 0.3%.But the ONS said in a statement: "However, this was the slowest growth seen in this measure throughout 2014."Textile, clothing and footwear sales provided the greatest source of down wards pressure, decreasing by 7.8% compared with August 2014, and by 4.1% compared with September 2013.Retailers such as Next and N Brown have reported lower sales as a result of the unusually mild autumn weather.Howard Archer at IHS Global Insight said: "It does look like consumers have reined in their spending to some degree after splashing out at a strong rate overall through the first half of the year."This is not that surprising given the overall pressure coming on consumers' purchasing power from prolonged very weak earnings growth."There are still decent supports for consumer spending and retail sales going forward, notably high and rising employment and very low consumer price inflation."However, it is questionable how strong consumer spending can be on a sustained basis until current very low earnings growth picks up appreciably."