Forecourt road fuel sales have remained rooted at about 8% below pre-pandemic levels during August despite millions more Britons than usual choosing to holiday in this country and the lifting Covid-19 restrictions.
The Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (BEIS) has moved from weekly to monthly reporting of sales figures and for the four weeks to August 29 they show average fuels sales across Great Britain’s forecourts were 92% of pre-pandemic levels.
Compared to the four weeks ending August 1, sales per filling station remained the same across Great Britain as a whole. Average sales were 0.7% lower in England, 3.6% higher in Scotland and were 0.1% higher in Wales.
The statistics from BEIS give a breakdown going back to the start of 2020, and report that in the eight weeks prior to the first lockdown on March 23 last year, average daily sales were 17,690 litres per filling station, with a peak of 20,983 on Friday February 28.
After the lockdown they fell rapidly bottoming out at 2,522 litres on Sunday April 12 and then steadily recovered to the present level.
The figures from BEIS are based on end-of-the-day snapshots of petrol and diesel sales and stock levels from a sample of around 4,500 filling stations across Great Britain.
However, the fuel volumes are collected primarily from oil companies, supermarkets and large independent filling stations, and this results in higher daily average figures than if all independent volumes were included.
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