Thu, 05 Jun 2025

Thu, 05 Jun 2025 UK inflation number too high after data blunder

The UK's statistics agency says April's inflation figure was too high after it was given incorrect road tax data.
Incorrect road tax data provided by the Department for Transport to the Office for National Statistics (ONS) has led to an overestimation of headline inflation rate for April by 0.1 percentage point. The ONS reported that the inflation rate was 3.5%, but it should have been 3.4%. This error occurred due to an incorrect number of vehicles being registered with road tax in the first year, which led to an overestimation of the data. The mistake has raised further concerns about the quality of data provided by the ONS and its potential impact on government decision-making and economic planning. The ONS stated that it will review its procedures for checking data from external sources but will not revise the April inflation figure due to a policy of only revising in exceptional circumstances. This incident comes amidst existing concerns about the reliability of the Labour Force Survey, which measures unemployment rates in the UK, and has sparked calls for improved methods and imputation techniques to address biases.
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