Will the high street slump spell trouble for the economy?

Consumers seem finally to have thrown in the towel: they are no longer propping up the economy. After a year in which the predicted recession kept failing to arrive, the high street finally ran out of steam in December with a hefty 3.2 per cent fall in sales volumes compared with November. Non-food was down 3.9 per cent. Year on year, according to the retail sales figures published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) this morning, sales were down 2.8 per cent in December.

This would appear to mark a headlong descent into recession – except that GDP figures published last week appeared to show the opposite: the economy rebounded by 0.3 per cent in December. So are we really sliding into the abyss or is the economy just fine?

There are ways to spend money other than in the shops or online.