LONDON (AP) — Britain's retailers saw a surprise rise in sales in January as higher food prices and strong demand during New Year sales helped drive the best performance since May, a retailing lobby group said yesterday.

In its monthly survey, the British Retail Consortium said like-for-like sales, which strip out new stores and space, increased by 1.1 percent in January from the previous year. In December, they had fallen by 2.2 percent.

The increase — the first for three months — was unexpected. Most analysts were expecting a one-percent year-on-year decline.

When new stores and space are included, sales rose 3.2 percent, in contrast to the 0.1 percent drop recorded in December.

The survey showed that food sales were strong and that nonfood sales, though down on the previous year, did not fall as much as they had in December as a result of widespread discounting during the sales. Stephen Robertson, the BRC's director-general, said the figures suggested there had been some "pent-up demand" as customers had waited until the post-Christmas sales to spend on goods they had intended to buy for months.

However, he cautioned against reading too much into one month's figures as the outlook for jobs was bleak and consumer confidence remained at very low levels.

"It remains to be seen whether January's discount-driven growth was just a blip," he said.

The news from the BRC comes just a week after the Halifax, Britain's biggest mortgage lender, revealed an unexpected 1.9 percent hike in house prices in January.

Separately, a leading organisation of British chartered surveyors noted yesterday that buyer interest was returning to the housing market but that this had not yet translated into sales.