Summer high street sales fell at their fastest pace in more than four years this month, figures show.
Weak consumer confidence was the likely reason for the drop in the immediate aftermath of the EU referendum, but the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) warned against reading "too much too soon".
The CBI's latest monthly Distributive Trades Survey found 24% of retailers said that sales volumes were up in July compared with a year earlier, while 38% said they were down, giving a rounded balance of -14%.
It found sales volumes declined more rapidly than at any time since January 2012, and companies expect a decline at a broadly similar pace next month.
Sales by grocers and furniture and carpets stores were the main drivers of the drop in overall volumes, but non-specialised department stores and footwear and leather goods retailers reported higher volumes.
Orders placed on suppliers dropped at the quickest pace since March 2009 and are expected to fall further in August.
CBI chief economist Rain Newton-Smith said: "While conditions in the retail sector have weakened, we should be careful about reading too much too soon, as consumers were likely to err on the side of caution in the immediate period following a vote to leave the EU.
"Current low levels of inflation and high overall employment should support consumer spending in the near term, although the impact of lower sterling is likely to feed through to higher inflation over time.
"What businesses and consumers need now is calm and decisive leadership, a clear timetable and a plan for negotiating the UK's future outside the EU to restore confidence."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here