High street hopes of a bumper Christmas have been dashed by the arrival in the UK of the Omicron variant, the latest snapshot of consumer activity has confirmed. The CBI’s monthly distributive trades survey reported a marked slowdown in activity after the government’s decision to trigger plan B measures as part of its response to the pandemic. The employers’ lobby group said sales growth had eased to its lowest since the spring, confounding expectations among retailers that they would build on November’s strong performance. While 44% of retailers said business was up on a year ago, 36% said it was down. The gap between the two – 8 percentage points – compared with +39 points in November. The CBI said more than half of firms that responded before the government’s plan B announcement on 8 December said sales were higher than last year, against a third of those that responded on or after that date. The survey was conducted between 24 November and 14 December. Retail sales were seen as broadly in line with seasonal norms in December, having been well above typical levels in November. Retailers said they were pessimistic about the outlook for January. Ben Jones, CBI lead economist, said: “Our December survey confirms what we have been hearing anecdotally about Omicron’s chilling impact on activity on the high street, with retail sales growth slowing and expectations for the coming month sharply downgraded. “On the supply side, retailers have been making progress in building up stocks, which were seen as more than adequate to deal with expected demand over Christmas. The concern now is the potential for rapidly rising sickness and staff absences to cause renewed disruption to supply chains in the new year. Samuel Tombs, UK economist at Pantheon Macro, said: “The sharp drop in the net balance of retailers reporting that sales were higher than a year ago suggests that annual growth in retail sales has slowed to a crawl. “The reported sales balance was at its lowest level since March. And the sales-for-the-time-of-year balance – which has a better relationship with the official data – fell to -2 in December, from +35 in November.”