John Lewis has a cracking Easter as sales surge

Revenues for the week to last Saturday were up 13.9 per cent on a year ago at £61.1 million with the figure also up by a quarter on the same holiday week in 2011.

But the group’s three Scottish stores saw mixed fortunes in the week after Easter, with Edinburgh’s sales up 5.3 per cent but Aberdeen only 0.4 per cent higher and Glasgow falling by 1.6 per cent.

The figures were announced as official retail data from Office for National Statistics confirmed retailers benefited from increased sales in March compared with 2011.

The British Retail Consortium said the lift was mainly because of the early warm weather and warned the boost was likely to be short-lived. It predicted many purchases made in March will turn out to be spending which would have otherwise happened in April and May rather than extra spending.

But John Lewis described consumer demand as very healthy and said there had been an “eye-catching” 58 per cent rise in website sales over the week. Sales in electricals and home technology surged 49.4 per cent, helped by the digital switchover in London and continuing demand for the iPad3.

This offset the effect of the poor weather on fashion sales, which grew just 0.9 per cent on last year.

Its Waitrose arm saw sales up 4.4 per cent compared with the six days after Easter last year.