UK high street suffers 'worst April in decade'

Total sales on the UK high street were down 1.6% in April, compared to +3.7% for the same month last year, according to the BDO High Street Sales Tracker (HSST).

This marks the eighth consecutive month of falling sales volumes on the UK high street, as growth rates remain below inflation, according to weekly sales data from retailers across both stores and online collected by the BDO.

The only bright spot was non-store fashion sales, which grew by 1.4% across the month, although this still remained under the rate of inflation and below April 2025 levels.

The last time monthly total like-for-like sales across the UK high street were negative in April was in 2020, and excluding COVID, this past month marks the worst April in a decade. Yet the comparison doesn't take into account that in 2016, shoppers stayed home due to a spate of severe snowstorms, while this past month saw mild weather.

For fashion overall, high street sales decreased by 1.4% in April, a big drop compared to the 6.4% boost fashion retailers enjoyed in March 2025. Zooming into the weekly sales data, the picture is turbulent. Week 1 saw a 14.09% drop in sales before recovering again in week three to +5.06% and week 4 to +1.82%, leading to a monthly average of -1.4%.

In-store fashion sales were down 0.8% across April, with a drop in sales in the first three weeks of the month before recovering to 4.70% in week 4. Again, these remained significantly below April 2025 levels.

The BDO highlighted that across the month, the UK registered fewer rainy days and even counted one of the hottest days in the last 80 years in the early weeks, before more normal spring weather returned in later weeks.

Yet the sunshine did "little to encourage shopping visits", it added, with footfall down in the first three weeks of April. Only in the last week did footfall rates turn positive, and then by just +1.7%.

Based on the UK GfK Consumer Confidence Index, consumer confidence also fell to its lowest point in more than two years, dropping from -21 in March to -25 in April.