As of the most recent month, prices were rising fastest in the education sector, at 7.5percent, with prices increasing at the slowest rate in the clothing and footwear sector. One of the main consequences of high inflation and low wage growth throughout 2022 and 2023 was an increase in industrial action in the UK. In December 2022, for example, there were approximately 830,000 working days lost due to labor disputes.

• Inflation nevertheless remains elevated, fueled not only by high food inflation, but also by underlying core inflation.
• During the most recent period of high inflation, core inflation peaked at 7.1 percent in May 2023, and while taking longer to fall than the overall figure, has generally been declining since then.
• Between 2021 and 2023, inflation surged in the UK, reaching a 41-year-high of 11.1 percent in October 2022.
• While the retail price index is still a popular method of calculating inflation, the consumer price index (CPI) is the current main measurement of inflation in the UK.

Debt not expected to start falling until 2029/30

As of December 2024, this was 3.2 percent, slightly higher than the overall CPI rate, but more aligned with the overall figure than it was in 2022 and 2023. When inflation peaked at 11.2 percent in October 2022, for example, core inflation stood at just 6.5 percent. After energy prices in 2023 fell relative to 2022, the overall inflation rate in the UK declined quite rapidly, with core inflation overtaking the overall rate in July 2023. During the most recent period of high inflation, core inflation peaked at 7.1 percent in May 2023, and while taking longer to fall than the overall figure, has generally been declining since then. Following the initial waves of the virus, global supply chains struggled to meet the renewed demand for goods and services.

Inflation in the UK

This statistic is using original data from the Office for National Statistics and includes copyright material from © Crown, licensed under the Open Government License v3.0. The most important key figures provide you with a compact summary of the topic of “Fast food restaurants in the United Kingdom” and take you straight to the corresponding statistics. The most important key figures provide you with a compact summary of the topic of “Migration in the UK” and take you straight to the corresponding statistics.

Inflation nevertheless remains elevated, fueled not only by high food inflation, but also by underlying core inflation. As of February 2025, the overall CPI inflation rate was 2.8 percent, although an uptick in inflation is expected later in the year, with a rate of 3.7 percent forecast for the third quarter of the year. Another way of measuring inflation is to strip out the volatility non gamstop casinos of energy and food prices and look at the underlying core inflation rate.

Between 1961 and 1990, temperatures in England averaged nine degrees Celsius, and from 2013 to 2022, average temperatures in the country had increased to 10.3 degrees Celsius. Although the Retail Price Index is a commonly utilized inflation indicator, the UK also uses a newer method of calculating inflation, the Consumer Price Index. The CPI, along with the CPIH (Consumer Price Index including owner occupiers’ housing costs) are usually preferred by the UK government, but the RPI is still used in certain instances. Increases in rail fares for example, are calculated using the RPI, while increases in pension payments are calculated using CPI, when this is used as the uprating factor. The use of one inflation measure over the other can therefore have a significant impact on people’s lives in the UK.

Inflation is an important measure of any country’s economy, and the Retail Price Index (RPI) is one of the most widely used indicators in the United Kingdom, with the rate expected to be 4.1 percent in 2025, compared with 3.6 percent in 2024. This followed 2022, when RPI inflation reached a rate of 11.6 percent, by far the highest annual rate during this provided time period. Hitting fiscal targets, such as reducing the national debt, will require a careful balancing of the books from the current government, and the possibility for either spending cuts or tax rises. Less than a year after implementing cuts to Winter Fuel, the government performed a U-Turn on the issue, and will make it widely available by the winter of 2025.

Sheryar Khan

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