The December figure of £4,275 was down by just £28 on the November figure.  However, sold volumes fell sharply compared to the previous month and performance against Guide Prices fell back by one and a half points to 98.5%.  

Year-on-year, December 2011 was a substantial £208 ahead of the same month in 2010, equivalent to a 5.1% improvement.  However this must be seen in the context of the heavy snowfall that severely restricted trading a year ago.  

Duncan Ward BCA’s General manager – Commercial Vehicles, commented: 'December is often a weaker month for price due to the reduced demand and much shorter trading period.  However, even taking this into account, prices remained strong when taking the longer view and average values over the last four months of 2011 comfortably outperformed the rest of the year.  We also saw a lot of professional buyers stocking for the New Year and this helped keep values relatively firm – particularly for the best retail quality vehicles.

'January typically sees the market take off with a bang and that has certainly been the case so far in 2012,' he added.