Public sector net borrowing, excluding public sector banks (£ million)

We have identified two issues with the Public Sector Finances release which was originally published on 22 October 2019. These issues have been corrected in this edition.

The main issue affected local government current expenditure and local government net borrowing in the financial year to date, as well as the equivalent general government and public sector measures; including public sector net borrowing. Public sector net borrowing (excluding public sector banks – PSNBex) was overstated by £1.3 billion in the financial year to date (April to September 2019); for September 2019 alone it was overstated by £0.2 billion.

A second, smaller issue involved the handling of public sector pensions data. This affected the current budget deficit (including public sector banks) between the financial year ending (FYE) March 1998 and FYE March 2008, but had no impact on the current budget deficit (excluding public sector banks). The size of the correction for this issue is negligible in each year.

Although GDP is not affected by this error, there will be some small impact on the Sector and Financial Accounts. The corrected data will be taken on in the next release, which is scheduled for December 2019.

The ONS apologises for this error and for any inconvenience.