Retail sales, Great Britain: April 2025

Retail sales volumes (quantity bought) are estimated to have risen by 1.2% in April 2025. This follows a rise of 0.1% in March 2025 (revised down from a rise of 0.4% in our last bulletin).

Food store sales volumes grew strongly in April 2025, which retailers attributed to the good weather.  

Sales volumes rose by 1.8% in the three months to April 2025, when compared with the three months to January 2025.

The chart shows the quantity bought in retail sales over time, for both the rolling three-month-on-three-month and month-on-month movements.

Sales volumes rose by 1.2% during April 2025, following a 0.1% rise in March. Sales volumes rose by 5.0% in the year to April 2025.

Volumes were up by 0.3%, compared with their pre-coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic level in February 2020, reaching their highest level since July 2022.

Four months of rising sales volumes led to a 1.8% rise across the three months to April 2025, when compared with the three months to January 2025. This was the largest three-monthly rise since July 2021. There was a 2.6% rise in sales volumes compared with the same period last year, the largest since March 2022. These data are available in our Retail Sales Index datasets.

Food stores sales volumes rose by 3.9%, mostly recovering from falls in February and March 2025. Supermarkets, specialist food stores such as butchers and bakers, and alcohol and tobacco stores all grew during the month, with some retailers attributing this to the good weather.

Non-food stores sales volumes (the total of department, clothing, household and other non-food stores) fell by 0.7% over the month. This was because of falls in clothing stores and other non-food stores (such as sports and games retailers, and second-hand goods stores). These falls in sales volumes mainly followed strong growth in March 2025. Sales for department stores and household goods stores rose on the month, with retailer comments again mentioning the good weather.

The Met Office climate summaries reported that the UK had its sunniest and third warmest April on record, and recorded just over half the normal rainfall seen for April.

The amount spent online, known as "online spending values", fell by 0.3% over the month to April 2025. Sales values however rose by 6.1% when comparing April 2025 with April 2024, and by 3.4% when comparing the three months to April 2025 with the three months to January 2025.

Total spend (the sum of in-store and online sales) rose by 0.7% over the month. As a result, the proportion of sales made online fell from 27.1% in March 2025 to 26.8% in April 2025.

For April 2025, the Retail Sales Index (RSI) response rates were 59.9%, based on returned forms. This accounted for 88.6% of total turnover coverage of the sample population. For historical response information, see our Retail sales quality tables dataset.

Information on how we calculated the data, including strengths and limitations, and a glossary of relevant terms, is available in our RSI quality and methodology information (QMI).

Seasonal adjustment

Seasonally adjusted estimates are derived by estimating and removing calendar effects (for example, Easter moving between March and April) and seasonal effects (for example, increased spending in December, because of Christmas) from the non-seasonally adjusted estimates.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) uses the X-13ARIMA-SEATS approach to seasonal adjustment. Seasonal adjustment parameters are monitored closely and regularly reviewed. For more information, please see our Seasonal adjustment methodology page.

Seasonal adjustment is applied at the industry level, and the seasonally adjusted series are aggregated to create estimates by industry sector and total retail. As part of our quality assurance approach, residual seasonality checks are completed regularly by our time series analysis team on the:

• directly seasonally adjusted series

• indirectly derived aggregate time series

Accredited official statistics

These accredited official statistics were independently reviewed by the Office for Statistics Regulation in April 2015. They comply with the standards of trustworthiness, quality and value in the Code of Practice for Statistics and should be labelled "accredited official statistics".