Brandwatch Bulletin: How Easing Lockdowns Affects Spending

What the Bank of England's data can tell us.

30 April 2021

Today we’re looking at consumer spending data straight from the Bank of England, and published by the ONS. Has the recent lockdown easing seen a jump in transactions?

Let’s find out.

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Return of the CHAPS

Back in January we looked at how consumer spending in the UK had been decimated by the pandemic. At the time, things were still looking dire with spending down 35% on pre-pandemic levels.

Four months later, and with lockdowns easing in the country, we wondered how things are looking now.

Today we’re taking another look at the Bank of England’s Clearing House Automated Payment System (CHAPS) data. This shows how much people are spending on their credit and debit cards in the UK at around 100 major retailers.

Indexed to February 2020, the data allows us to track UK consumer spending on a week-to-week basis compared to pre-pandemic levels.

For more details on the methodology behind CHAPS data and how it’s collected, here’s an explainer.

Now to the data. First, we looked at how overall spending levels are looking now that non-essential shops, pubs, and hairdressers have reopened.

The recovery in consumer spending in 2021 is very clear, with levels steadily increasing since January. But this increase started from a very low ebb, so while progress has been made, the UK is only now seeing levels equal to those before the pandemic.

Of course, no one expected it to be easy. However we can see the effects of lockdown measures being relaxed. On April 12, unessential shops and other businesses were able to open their doors again and we can see a corresponding boost in spending.

We should also note that we see spikes in spending at the end of each month, most likely caused by pay days. With April’s still to come, we can expect to see spending levels reach heights we’ve not seen since December last year.

There is still a long, long way to go, especially when you remember how much lost spending businesses still need to make up for. But with further restrictions being dropped in May, cases at low levels, increasing numbers of people getting vaccinated, and a hopeful lockdown exit date of June 21, the path forward is looking a little steadier now.

Breaking things down by sector

That’s the big picture, but what happens when we look a little closer?

Usefully, the data can also be split out into the following categories:

Staples (food and drink, communication, utilities)
Delayable (clothing and footwear, vehicle purchases, household goods)
Work-related (public transport and fuel)
Social (air travel, games of chance, restaurants, bars, and hotels)

Here are some specifics from the ONS on what falls into each category (the percentages refer to their portion of overall spending).

We already looked at this data across the whole pandemic in our previous bulletin, so today we’ll focus on 2021 (though still compared to February 2020 levels).

Clearly the post-April 12 bump is not being felt evenly across sectors. Delayable spending was the main driver here. With many non-essential shops that stock items in this category now open, this makes sense. We imagine a fair few people got new clothes in preparation for socializing more too.

Work-related spending, while steadily rising all year, also saw a bump. This is presumably as more people travelled to work at reopened businesses. Meanwhile, staple spending is about where it was at the start of the year, having fallen after an Easter bump.

No surprises so far. But now we look at social spending, which importantly includes bars and restaurants. With these businesses partially re-opening, we may have expected a drastic increase. Sadly, spending levels haven’t moved much.

We can see a slight bump around April 12. It might not look like anything to shout about, but it was the most social spending the UK has seen since March 2020. That’s something to celebrate.

The issue is that this increase soon disappears, and spending levels are now the same as they were before the easing. While still at high levels in relation to the rest of the pandemic, this may be disappointing news for pub and restaurant owners.

There are a lot of factors at play here. First, the excitement of getting back to the pub may have faded quickly, especially with the stringent social distancing and booking requirements in place. Any bad weather will also hamper spending when many businesses are operating outdoors-only, while people may have offset their big delayable expenditures by passing on a meal out for now. It might be exciting to get back to some normality, but many people are still feeling the financial pinch.

The big test will be this weekend, as millions across the country get their pay packets. With full wallets, a bank holiday, and fresh outfits, this is likely to be the best weekend for pubs and restaurants of the pandemic so far. Let’s hope for sunshine.

Good luck, chaps!

If you want to take a look at the CHAPs data, you can find it here, with the next dataset released on May 6.

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Thanks for reading

That’s it for today. We’ll be back next Friday due to the UK bank holiday on Monday. If you were forwarded this email and want in on the action, get subscribed to the Brandwatch Bulletin now.

Stay safe,

The Brandwatch React team

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