Bathrooms and kitchens slump is a drain on Wickes

The tumbleweed blowing through the High Street and retail parks has hit DIY store Wickes, whose kitchens and bathrooms division saw sales fall 13% in the 11 months to December.

The chain blamed the decline on "weakening consumer confidence for major purchases". Overall, for the last eight weeks like-for-like sales fell 6.8%.

But the mood was better for Wickes' owner, Travis Perkins. The builders' merchant - which bought plumbing supplies company BSS last year - said turnover rose 5.5% across the 11 months. That's on a pro-forma basis, calculated as if the two businesses had operated singly for the past year.

Elsewhere in the DIY sector, Wickes' rival B&Q, owned by Kingfisher, last week said the closure of Focus DIY had helped ease its sales decline.

Its 536 B&Q and Screwfix stores in the UK and Ireland posed a fall in like-for-like sales of 0.7% in the three months to November, but that was an improvement on the 1.3% dip in the previous quarter.