THE county’s independent butchers have seen their sales boom in recent months amid a dramatic drop in the number of sausages bought nationally.

Latest figures released by the Office for National Statistics showed that UK manufacturers’ sales have dropped by more than two billion individual sausages a year since 2008.

But Oxfordshire’s independent butchers said they have been cashing in on a trend which is seeing the public steer away from supermarket stock.

Dave Bartlett has been running Bartlett’s Butchers in Kidlington for more than 30 years and says sausage sales are booming.

He said: “We have had the opposite.

“We have never made so many sausages as in the last three or four months.Mr Bartlett opened his shop in 1984 as one of five butchers in the village.”

One by one his competitors have fallen by the wayside with his last remaining rival Dave Woodward, of Woodlands Quality Butchers in Bicester Road closing in August last year.

The 54-year-old said his spike in business was partly down to being Kidlington’s sole survivor but that there was a bigger trend occurring. He said: “Since the horsemeat scandal the big manufacturers have suffered a bit.”

The ONS figures showed the volume of sausages sold dropped by 118 million kg - a 26 per cent fall over the same period.

Alcock’s Family Butchers in Banbury Road was opened in 1986 and it too is the last surviving independent butchers in the area.

Shop owner Paul England said: “We are definitely seeing a steady increase in sales and how much we are making.”

Crick’s Butchers has been a permanent fixture of the Wheatley High Street for 40 years Owner Jason Robinson said: “I’m making more sausages than before and more people are coming to us from supermarkets.”