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

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

The startling 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 to register a gain four times as big as the City had forecast.

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

The cash value of sales rung up at the tills last month also accelerated strongly, climbing by 0.7 per cent, and lifting the annual pace of increase on this measure of trading to 4.1 per cent, from just 1.5 per cent in December.

“The verdict is clear: UK consumers may be down, but we are not out. If we have the cash and the price is right, we will spend,” said Geoffrey Dicks, of RBS Global Banking and Markets.

Struggling retailers, however, were forced to resort to dramatic price-cutting to tempt consumers back to the shops after a lacklustre Christmas trading season.

Prices at non-food stores last month were 3.5 per cent lower than a year earlier, continuing their decline from a 3.4 per cent year-on-year fall in December to register their sharpest annual drop for two decades.

Prices for electrical products were cut even more steeply to levels nearly 15 per cent lower than at the same time last year - the biggest year-on-year fall in prices for a decade.

This heavy discounting helped to trigger a 4.3 per cent leap in sales of household goods last month, lifting annual sales growth in the sector to 14.8 per cent - the strongest increase since October 2001.

“Consumers were coaxed out of their boltholes by good price bargains … Whether this will last in open to doubts,” David Brown, of Bear Stearns, said.

The strength of the figures will dampen fears over a consumer slowdown and reinforce City expectations that the Bank of England will be slow to deliver further cuts in interest rates.

But economists sounded a series of cautionary notes over reading too much into the figures. Even some of the Bank’s leading hawks are now expressing concern over the outlook for consumer demand.

After doveish comments earlier this week by one of the Bank’s leading hawks, Tim Besley, a fellow hardliner on the Monetary Policy Committee, Andrew Sentance, joined him in warning of worsening growth prospects.

Dr Sentence argued 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 are notoriously erratic, and fraught with difficulties over adjusting for big seasonal swings in trading patterns.

Last month’s performance in particular was likely to have been boosted when compared to very weak cash sales in December, as well as the unusually early timing of Easter this year.

Analysts said a better guide to prospects for high street trading was probably less volatile three monthly figures.

Growth in sales volumes in the three months to January stood at a 10-month low of 0.6 per cent, while after accounting for discounting growth in the cash value of sales over the same period was close to a two-year low, at only 0.2 per cent.

For non-food retailers, the value of three monthly sales actually fell by 1.2 per cent in January, in the steepest drop since early 2005, Michael Saunders, of Citigroup, noted.

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