Weekly forecourt fuel sales fall for the first time since the recovery began

The latest weekly figures from the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (DBEIS) show that for the week ending August 9 sales were at 87% of their pre-lockdown level.

This was a decrease of 0.9% compared with the previous seven days, with average diesel sales at 87% and petrol sales also at 87% of a typical week before lockdown, with average daily sales of 9,120 litres of diesel and 6,310 litres of petrol.

In the eight weeks prior to the lockdown on March 23 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.

Until last week sales climbed steadily to a daily average of 15,570 litres, but last week the total fell back slightly to 15,440 litres, but this is still the second highest figure since the recovery began.

The statistics also record average stock levels at the end of each day, which were 43% before the lockdown. After rising to 46% early in the lockdown they also averaged 43% over the period of May 11 to August 9, although they were marginally down, at 42%, in the final week.

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 very large independent filling stations, and this results in higher daily average figures than if all independent volumes were included.The latest weekly figures from the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (DBEIS) show that for the week ending August 9 sales were at 87% of their pre-lockdown level.