John Lewis yesterday reported its eighth year-on-year fall in its weekly department store sales in the space of nine weeks.

John Lewis yesterday reported its eighth year-on-year fall in its weekly department store sales in the space of nine weeks.

Dan Knowles, a director of selling operations at John Lewis, declared: "It's definitely tough out there."

The retailer said yesterday that sales in the week to July 5 were down 1.3% on the same period last year.

This represented a sharp deceleration in the rate of decline from the year-on-year tumble of 8.3% in the preceding week to June 28.

Knowles said he was "delighted" with trading in the week to July 5 - the first full week of John Lewis's "Clearance" sale.

However, increasing consumer weakness is writ large in the fact that John Lewis sales have shown year-on-year falls in all but one of the last nine weeks.

John Lewis's Glasgow store suffered a 6.4% year-on-year drop in sales in the week to July 5. This store has found trading much tougher, relative to prior-year comparatives, in recent times.

In contrast, the retailer's Edinburgh and Aberdeen department stores bucked the overall decline with respective year-on-year increases in sales of 4.8% and 2.6%.

Knowles added: "Edinburgh traded well right across the shop and beat last year handsomely, as did Aberdeen."

Comparing the 23 weeks to July 5 with the same period last year, John Lewis's department store sales were up only 0.5%.

Howard Archer, chief UK economist at consultancy Global Insight, said: "This comparison is steadily trending lower and seems set to fall into negative territory before long."

However, a more upbeat Knowles said: "It looks like we will have had a good clearance, clearing much of our old stock as well as selling good volumes of full-price merchandise. It's definitely tough out there, but many of our competitors would love to have our figures and we should be proud of all that has been achieved."

Archer sees increasing signs of consumers trading down and becoming ever more focused on bargains.

Noting John Lewis department store sales "are generally seen as a good bellwether for the health of consumer spending", Archer said: "Consequently, ongoing evidence of softer sales clearly points to consumers reining in their spending in the face of squeezed purchasing power and other serious pressures. It also follows on from recent very disappointing news from Marks & Spencer."

He added: "The prospects for consumer spending over the coming months look pretty bleak."