The grim distributive trades survey, published yesterday by the Confederation of British Industry, came hard on the heels of figures last week from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) which showed a 1.3% month-on-month fall in UK retail sales volumes in April.

Subtracting the percentage of retailers reporting in the April 24 to May 15 survey period that sales volumes were higher than a year earlier from that experiencing a fall, a net 11% suffered a decline.