May 12 (Reuters) – British consumers, shaken by the widening economic fallout from the Iran war, cut their spending last month for the first \u200ctime since November 2024 as they focused on essentials rather than leisure, \u200ca survey showed on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Barclays said spending on its credit and debt cards fell by 0.1% \u200bin annual terms in April after a 0.9% increase in March. Its survey showed heavy declines in spending on hotels and travel.<\/p>\n
A separate survey of retailers from the British Retail Consortium showed a sharp drop in store spending last month, albeit distorted \u200cby the timing of the \u2060Easter holidays.<\/p>\n
Both surveys showed a reduction in spending on big-ticket items as households adopted a cautious financial stance. The readings chimed \u2060with other gauges of the consumer economy that show faltering morale.<\/p>\n
“This data shows consumers are already adapting in response to the shock from the Middle East, for instance, by \u200bbuilding \u200bup a savings buffer,” said Barclays chief \u200bUK economist Jack Meaning.<\/p>\n
“With uncertainty high \u200cboth at home and abroad, it is unsurprising to see confidence falling.”<\/p>\n
The BRC said retail sales fell by 3.0% in annual terms in April, after a 3.6% rise in March. Taking March and April together – to account for the different timings of Easter this year and last year – retail sales were up 1.5% on \u200cthe year.<\/p>\n
“But weak consumer confidence also played \u200ba role as fears about the Middle East \u200bconflict driving up living costs led \u200bshoppers to rein in,” said BRC chief executive Helen Dickinson, \u200cciting weak readings for sectors like furniture.<\/p>\n
Barclays \u200bsaid card spending \u200bon travel dropped by 5.7% in annual terms.<\/p>\n
“The key unknown for the UK outlook is how long this uncertainty will last,” Meaning said.<\/p>\n
“If confidence remains \u200bsubdued for too long, \u200cand consumers continue to limit their spending as a result, it will \u200bbe a challenge for households and businesses to weather the storm.”<\/p>\n
(Reporting \u200bby Andy Bruce; editing by Suban Abdulla)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"May 12 (Reuters) – British consumers, shaken by the widening economic fallout from the Iran war, cut their…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":637855,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[18106,275426,98634,28,20235,101,2897],"class_list":["post-637854","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-barclays","tag-british-consumers","tag-british-retail-consortium","tag-business","tag-consumer-confidence","tag-economy","tag-spending"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/637854","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=637854"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/637854\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/637855"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=637854"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=637854"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=637854"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}