The UK is to modernise the way it gets information on the economy, such as inflation statistics, with price data on more than one billion units of grocery sales to be gathered.
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said this week that it would be rolling out a new system for measuring inflation in the grocery sector in March 2025, Reuters reported.
The change represents the biggest update of the statistics agency’s inflation data gathering to date, covering a total 50% of the grocery market.
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As of next March, the new system will cover around 300 million price points derived from sales of over one billion units of products per month, up from the 25,000 prices currently gathered by price collectors each month.
The update will also allow the ONS to increase the range of products analysed, gather prices throughout the month rather than on a specific day, and inform on the quantities sold.
However, the agency will continue to use price collectors to measure how prices have changed in smaller grocery stores.
According to the ONS’ latest consumer price inflation tracker, food inflation fell 0.2 percentage points in June to 1.5% as the prices of essential items such as pasta and margarine eased.
This figure marked the lowest annual rate since October 2021 where it sat at 1.3%, and compares with 17.4% a year ago.
