Aggressive price cuts by retailers, including reductions on electrical goods, lured Britain's consumers back to the high streets in their droves last month.

Economists said that it was too soon to write off the country's resilient shoppers, despite growing fears of a severe consumer downturn, after much stronger than expected retail sales figures.

The data showed that the volume of goods sold on high streets last month soared by 0.8 per cent, reversing a downwardly revised drop of 0.2 per cent in the previous month. The figures represented a gain four times as large as the City had forecast.

The jump in sales marked the steepest monthly rise in sales volumes for 11months and saw their annual pace of increase double to 5.6 per cent, the highest increase for three years.

The cash value of sales last month also accelerated strongly, by 0.7 per cent, lifting the annual gain to 4.1 per cent, from only 1.5 per cent in December. However, struggling retailers were still forced to resort to dramatic price-cutting to tempt consumers back to the shops.

Prices at non-food stores last month were 3.5 per cent lower than a year earlier, the sharpest drop for two decades. Prices for electrical products were cut even more steeply, by nearly 15 per cent from the same time last year, the biggest year-on-year decline for a decade. This heavy discounting helped to trigger a 4.3 per cent leap in household goods sales last month, lifting annual sales growth in the sector to 14.8 per cent, the strongest increase since October 2001.

However, economists cautioned against reading too much into the figures. Even some of the Bank's leading hawks are expressing concern over the outlook for consumer demand. After doveish comments this week by Tim Besley, one of the Bank's leading hawks, a fellow hardliner on the Monetary Policy Committee, Andrew Sentance, also gave warning of worsening growth prospects.

Dr Sentance insisted that a UK recession was a “remote” threat, but argued that “we should expect to see a significant slowdown in growth”.

Economists noted that January retail sales figures were notoriously erratic, and fraught with difficulties over adjusting for big seasonal swings in trading.

Analysts said a better guide was probably less volatile three-monthly figures.

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