Cost of living squeeze dents Christmas high street spending

British Retail Consortium blames inflation for meagre rise in spending on gifts with shoppers spending more on essentials

High street spending in the run-up to Christmas increased at the slowest rate since 2012 after spiralling prices forced shoppers to spend more of their earnings on food and essential items.

Figures from the British Retail Consortium (BRC) sent a worrying signal to non-food retailers, in a week of crucial trading updates for the sector, as they showed that consumers reined in their spending on furniture, clothes and footwear in December.

Inflation is when prices rise. Deflation is the opposite - price decreases over time - but inflation is far more common.

Like-for-like sales have become the benchmark in the City for judging the current performance of retailers. Typically represented as percentage growth rates, like-for-like sales measure sales at stores that have been open for at least a year, stripping out the impact of sales at newer stores. The idea is that they allow a more transparent comparison of a retailer's sales performance over a certain period of time, when compared with the same period of time a year earlier.