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UK food prices as big a concern for consumers as energy bills

The rate at which food prices are rising has continued to slow but stubbornly high grocery prices mean the cost of the weekly shop is now as big a concern as energy bills, according to research.

Food inflation fell from 13.4% in the year to July to 11.5% in August, according to data published on Tuesday by the British Retail Consortium. This helped bring overall shop price inflation down from 7.6% in July to 6.9%.

Helen Dickinson, the BRC chief executive, described the downward trend as “better news for consumers” and pointed to slower price increases for meat, potatoes and some cooking oils.

Price hikes for toiletries and cosmetics had also eased, the BRC said, based on data for the first week of August, while inflation ticked up on clothing and footwear as shops ended their summer sales.

Prices surged as supply chains struggled to respond to demand after the end of Covid lockdowns. Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine sent energy prices soaring further.

In the UK that caused inflation to hit a 41-year high of 11.1% last October, while food price inflation peaked at 19.1% in March this year, according to government figures. The latest BRC data suggested the overall UK inflation rate should fall for August, although those figures will not be released until 20 September.

The outsized role of food inflation has meant supermarkets have faced political pressure to cut energy prices, amid a backlash from the public over the scale of the increases.

As a result trust in the supermarket sector has fallen to its lowest since the horsemeat scandal a decade ago, a separate poll by the consumer group Which? found.

Its monthly consumer insight tracker found that in August trust had dropped to the lowest it has been since February 2013, when meat products were found to contain undisclosed horse DNA.

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