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The recent recovery in forecourt road fuel sales stalled last week with the figures across Great Britain down 6.5% compared with the previous week.

With the recent easing of Covid-19 restrictions across the home nations forecourt fuel sales across GB had risen to 92% of pre-covid levels for the week ended May 2, according to the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (DBEIS).

However, sales across GB last week fell to 86% of their pre-covid level, with average sales 6.8% lower than the previous week in England, 6.2% lower in Wales and 3.0% lower in Scotland.

Across GB average daily sales of diesel were 9,020 litres, 86% of pre-pandemic levels and average daily sales of petrol were 6,230 litres, which was also 86% of pre-pandemic levels.

According to a note released with the statistics the weekly fall was largely as a result of the bank holiday in England and Wales.

The statistics from DBEIS give a weekly breakdown going back to the start of 2020, and report that in the eight weeks prior to the first lockdown on March 23 2020, 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 have been recovering ever since, with occasional setbacks.

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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