A triple whammy of bad weather, a rise in VAT and less aggressive discounting by retailers made it the worst January for retail sales in 15 years, according to the British Retail Consortium (BRC).

Sales rose just 1.2% year-on-year last month, the least since the survey began in 1995, and fell 0.7% on a like-for-like basis. They had increased by 6% and 4.2 respectively in December.

Economists were hoping for a 3.3% rise versus the year before and 0.5% increase like-for-like.

The BRC said food sales were helped by the snow early in the month as people stocked up on essentials, but they slowed as the weather improved.

Non-food, especially discretionary items, were hit by the coldest January since 1987 and staged only a partial recovery when the snow cleared.

Sales of food, clothing and footwear showed were all higher than a year ago, but homewares and furniture fell.

'The underlying trend is difficult to read but there is no doubt that the strong sales we saw in December 2009 are not indicative of the trend for the rest of this year,' said Helen Dickinson, head of retail at KPMG, which helps compile the survey.

Howard Archer, chief UK economist at IHS Global Insight, hopes some of the loss in retail sales caused by the weather will be made up as consumers tend to delay purchases rather than cancel them altogether when circumstances keep them from the shops.

'Nevertheless, weak retail sales in January reinforce concerns that the UK economy could suffer a "double dip" in the early months of 2010 after only crawling out of recession in the fourth quarter of 2009 as some of the temporary factors that have been supporting activity are removed,' he said.

The cut in VAT from 17.5% to 15% was reversed in January, the car scrappage scheme will end by March, while the Bank of England's Quantitative Easing programme has at least halted temporarily.

Archer thinks Britain will struggle to grow more than 1% in 2010.

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