Retail Sales Ex Fuel YoY

Retail Sales Ex Fuel YoY is the yearly change in quantity of retail goods sold in Great Britain, excluding automotive fuel. It uses a chained volume index, a sales index linked across cycles after removing price rises and seasonal calendar effects. The Office for National Statistics (ONS), the national statistics agency, builds it from about 5000 retailers drawn from about 200000 shops. Those shops cover about 75.7% of retail turnover, with a questionnaire response rate of about 61.9% covering about 92.2% of sampled turnover.

It covers Great Britain only, and it guides the Bank of England, the central bank, and Treasury, the finance ministry, for policy and GDP estimates. There is no buy or sell threshold, so read it directionally against prior readings and expectations. Volume means quantity after prices, while value means cash turnover collected over the period.

Responses cover standard trading periods on a 4-week, 4-week and 5-week cycle, with an extra week added at long intervals. It appears typically about 20 days after the period ends at 7 am United Kingdom time. One release in each cycle takes about 27 days because price data arrive later for the basket update. Each release brings sector commentary, adjusted and unadjusted value and volume tables, online share, time series, revisions triangles, and quality tables.

First estimates are provisional and later revisions reflect late replies, re-estimated seasonal factors, the yearly sample update and method changes. Use each release to compare quantity bought with cash spent, and to see which sectors drive the headline.

This index tracks everyday goods, so food anchors it while discretionary lines and remote sellers swing the yearly rate.

• Predominantly food stores: supermarkets, butchers, bakers, alcohol and tobacco shops; captures grocery sales with supermarket fuel moved out.
• Non-food stores: department stores, clothing and footwear, household goods and other specialist shops; captures discretionary goods and moves most with promotions.
• Non-store retailing: sellers with no shop, mainly online plus stalls and markets; captures remote sales, while store websites stay in their shop sector.
• Automotive fuel, excluded: petrol station and supermarket fuel sales; volatile with pump prices, so exclusion removes fuel swings from the signal.

When fuel prices jump, headline and ex-fuel can diverge, so always read this series as quantity after prices and check fuel first.

1. Collect: Questionnaires collect turnover including VAT, value added tax, plus a separate online figure for standard trading periods.
2. Edit and impute: Checks flag odd returns for manual review, and missing replies are filled from past sales ratios with caps on outliers.
3. Estimate population: Sample turnover is scaled by register turnover to cover all retailers in the business register.
4. Index the value: Sales are divided by the base average to form a value index that tracks cash turnover.
5. Deflate to volume: Each industry sales are divided by a matching basket of consumer price indices, with basket shares from a 3-year average refreshed yearly.
6. Chain-link: Yearly baskets are linked with a three-month average at year end as the link factor, building a continuous series from the bottom up.
7. Seasonally adjust: X-13-ARIMA-SEATS software removes calendar effects at industry level each cycle, then aggregates, using data rounded to 4 decimals but publishing to 1 decimal.
8. Year-on-year growth: This indicator compares the adjusted ex-fuel index with the same period 12 months earlier.

For example, 100.0000 then 99.4000 gives 100 times (99.4000 minus 100.0000) divided by 100.0000, published as -0.6%.