Almost a fifth of Britain's households are struggling to make ends meet as rising supermarket prices add to the all-round squeeze on budgets, new surveys have found.
Over the past four weeks, supermarket prices were 7% higher than a year earlier, the highest level of inflation since May 2009, according to monthly research from Kantar.
This compared to 6.7% on the year food and drink inflation in the latest Office for National Statistics (ONS) report for April, when consumer price inflation hit 9%.
Compared to the ONS inflation basket, which contains 733 items, Kantar said its inflation survey is the “most authoritative figure currently available” and is a “pure inflation measure in that shopping behaviour is held constant between the two comparison periods – shoppers are likely to achieve a lower personal inflation rate if they trade down or seek out more offers”.
Another survey from Kantar found 22% of households describe themselves as “struggling” with their financial situation and another 43% of households as “managing”, versus around a third that are “comfortable”. The survey was conducted with 9,362 households in mid-April.
“Within the growing group of shoppers struggling to make ends meet, the rising price of groceries is of concern to over 9 in ten people, making it the second most important issue behind the spiralling cost of energy bills,” said Fraser McKevitt, Kantar’s head of retail and consumer insight.
He added: “People are really feeling the squeeze at the supermarket tills and they’re having to stretch their budgets further to accommodate rising prices.”
Prices are rising fastest for dog food, savoury snacks and fresh beef, while falling in spirits, according to a comparison of over 75,000 identical products.
Discounters Lidl and Aldi were the fastest-growing major retailers during the period, with sales up 6.0% and 5.8% over the 12 weeks to 15 May.
Lidl hit a new market share high of 6.9%, while Aldi climbed to a 9.0% share of the market for the first time, closing in on fourth-placed Morrisons at 9.5%
Market leader Tesco performed ahead of the wider market, increasing its share for the 17th month in a row, to 27.4%.
Sainsbury’s sits at 14.8% and Asda at 13.8%.