Shoppers embarked on a spending spree with £480m handed over at the tills

SHOPPERS SPENT £480m more at the tills over Christmas compared with the previous year, leading to record sales over the festive period.

The latest grocery market share figures from Kantar Worldpanel show the fastest recorded growth since June 2014.

Tesco and Morrisons enjoyed positive sales increases, although Sainsbury’s and Asda were in negative territory. However, Asda nearly halved the rate of its decline.

Fraser McKevitt, head of retail and consumer insight at Kantar Worldpanel, said: “Asda has increased the number of shoppers coming through the door.

“They are not there yet, but that’s the best performance in a long time.”

During the 12 weeks to January 1, Tesco saw a 1.3 per cent sales increase helped by improvements to its fresh food range. Morrisons increased total sales by 1.2 per cent.

“This is the first time we’ve seen growth at Morrisons for some time,” said Mr McKevitt.

“The turnaround has been impressive and they have fixed some of the basics.

“They did well with fresh food and the ‘Best’ range is growing incredibly strongly at 40 per cent. Morrisons can look forward to a much better 2017.”

Sainsbury’s saw a marginal sales decline of 0.1 per cent while enjoying a record Christmas online and Asda saw sales fall by 2.4 per cent.

The Kantar data showed that prices are rising across the UK’s supermarkets for the first time since 2014.

Like-for-like prices increased by 0.2 percentage points bringing a return to inflation after 28 months of deflation in the market.

Britain’s overall inflation rate has begun to rise following the slump in the value of the pound caused by the Brexit vote last June, and it is expected to hit around 3 per cent this year.