Royal wedding boosts British sales to biggest rise in five years

It has been a wonderful April for British trade. Sales on a like-for-like basis (meaning: using the same number of stores) rose 5.2% compared to April 2010. The beautiful Easter weekend has helped sales a lot, but the major boost came from the marriage of Prince William and Kate Middleton.

According to the British Retail Consortium BRC, this is the biggest progress in the last five years. “Both Easter and the marriage caused people to buy significantly more clothing and food. Retailers needed that boost, because in March people had bought 3.5% less compared to the year before. If we take March and April together, we have a status quo for 2011.”, says BRC’s Director General Stephen Robertson, who also added that “the underlying pressures on the retail sector of climbing costs and depressed consumer spending will be problems for many months to come”.