The high street recorded its worst sales in two years in August, a survey has said, as the riots that shook the UK took a heavy toll on the retail sector.
Mid-market retailers reported a year-on-year like-for-like sales drop of 2.2%, according to accountancy firm BDO's High Street Sales Tracker.
The widespread looting and destruction in early August, which saw the likes of Currys and JD Sports attacked, deterred consumers from parting with their hard-earned cash, BDO said.
The riots came at a time when confidence was already low as spending is squeezed by high inflation and muted wage growth and the outlook for the wider economy is bleak.
The retail sector has seen lacklustre sales growth with official figures showing sales volumes slowing to 0.2% growth in July, from 0.8% in June.
Don Williams, national head of retail and wholesale at BDO, said: "Ever since the recession hit, smart retailers have been working flat out to keep consumers spending in an extremely tough trading environment. But the scale and ferocity of the disruption we saw in August was a real body blow.
"We don't expect the pressure on consumer confidence to ease - or the cash they have in their pockets to increase - so we're not expecting the sort of 'keep calm and carry on' sales uplift that we might see if the economy was in better health."
Even areas not affected by the riots directly felt the pinch as police advice to close early ate into trading hours, BDO said. All sectors saw year-on-year sales dips in the four weeks to August 28.
Fashion and homewares sales both slumped by 2.4%, with the former seeing more mainstream brands hit particularly hard by the drop in footfall.
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The strength of non-store sales, such as online and mail order, which were up 40.2% year-on-year, should also give retailers with a multi-channel offering some confidence, BDO added.
