FOI reference: FOI-2025-2981
You asked
I am writing to request data under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 in relation to the Retail Sales Index (RSI), specifically the series published on the ONS website.
We are seeking a regional breakdown of the following:
Dataset: RSI - Alcoholic Drinks, Beverages and Tobacco (Volume, NSA), All Business Index - If possible, could this be disaggregated to show Alcoholic Drinks only (excluding tobacco)? If not, no problem.
Frequency: Monthly
Time period: From 2010 to the most recent available
Geographic coverage (in order of preference):
- Manchester and Derby (separately), or
- North West and East Midlands (separately)
We said
Thank you for your request.
Unfortunately we do not hold the data you have requested.
Retail sales data are collected separately for "Retail sales of beverages in specialist stores" and "Retail sale of tobacco products in specialist stores". However, they are processed as a combined industry group of Alcoholic drinks, beverages and tobacco stores. This means we are unable to disaggregate to show alcoholic drinks only. Retail sales do not have data for the geographic coverage requested.
Our Non-financial business economy release does have geographic data for the North West and East Midland separately for Total retail. However, these are annual data (rather than monthly) and value data (rather than volume).
Unfortunately, we are unaware of any other data source for this level of information.