LONDON’S shops have been handed an early Christmas present in the form of whopping November sales figures, the best in town since 2006.


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Compared to last year, sales in central London shot up by up 13.3%, reports the British Retail Consortium, and that recession busting boost has continued into December.

“These figures show London retailers have had a very encouraging start to Christmas with even big-ticket items doing well,” said the BRC’s Stephen Robertson.

“Retailers will be hoping customers remain as resilient into the new year.”

One example of the boom is the performance of Primark on Oxford Street, which took £750,000 last Saturday, over a hundred thousand more than the equivalent Saturday last year.

London’s shopping spree stands in contrast to the rest of the UK, which posted a modest 1.8% rise in sales compared to November 2008. Mainly, that’s down to London’s position as a tourist destination combined with the strength of the euro over the pound, which has made things in London cheap for continental Europeans.

“The weakness of the pound has continued to attract overseas visitors who were out in the capital’s department stores in force,” said Helen Dickinson, of business consultants KPMG.