The British Retail Consortium have announced that December's sales demonstrated the strongest year-on-year growth for four years.
The BRC revealed that overall UK sales rose by 4.2 per cent compared to December 2008, while internet and mail order sales rocketed by 26.5 per cent.
Stephen Robertson, director general of the BRC, said: 'These are stronger figures than we dared hope for. After a surprisingly muted November, this is the best total sales growth for a December since 2005 and goes well beyond just making up for the sales fall the sector suffered a year ago.
'The figures were certainly helped by the comparison with last December's terrible results but customers clearly felt more confident about spending than they have for some time.'
