Business investment in the UK: October to December 2024 provisional results

• UK business investment decreased by 3.2% in Quarter 4 (Oct to Dec) 2024 and is 0.7% below the level in the same quarter a year ago.

• Annual UK business investment increased by 0.8% in 2024.

• Data are open to revision from Quarter 1 (Jan to Mar) 2024 onwards in line with our National Accounts Revisions Policy.

• Our GDP first quarterly estimate, UK: October to December 2024 bulletin has further commentary on these data and the release hyperlink can be found in Section 4: Related links

Quality and methodology information on strengths, limitations, appropriate uses, and how the data were created is available in our Business Investment Quality and Methodology Information (QMI).

Revisions

In line with our National Accounts Revisions Policy, the data are open to revision from Quarter 1 (Jan to Mar) 2024 to Quarter 3 (July to Sept) 2024 for current price data, and chained volume measure (CVM) estimates.

Data within this bulletin

All data within this bulletin, unless specified, are presented in chained volume measure (CVM), otherwise known as real. This means the effect of price changes has been removed (in other words, the data are deflated).

In Quarter 4 (Oct to Dec) 2024, the Quarterly Acquisitions and Disposals of Capital Assets Survey (QCAS), the largest data source for gross fixed capital formation (GFCF) and business investment, had a response rate of 64.6% for estimates used in the provisional release.

Adjustments

Large capital expenditure tends to be reported later in the data collection period than smaller capital expenditure. This means that larger expenditures are often included in the revised results but are not reported in time for the provisional results. This can lead to a tendency toward upward revisions in the later estimates for business investment and gross fixed capital formation (GFCF).

Following investigation of the impact of this effect, from Quarter 3 (July to Sept) 2013, an approach to apply a bias adjustment was introduced in the provisional estimate. Any bias adjustment that is applied is later removed in the revised release.

This adjustment approach was suspended in Quarter 2 (Apr to June) 2020 because of uncertainties surrounding the effect of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. However, since Quarter 4 (Oct to Dec) 2021, after further investigation and analysis of its impact, the bias adjustment approach was reintroduced to business investment and GFCF. The bias adjustment for this provisional release is £1.3 billion.

Accredited official statistics

These accredited official statistics were independently reviewed by the Office for Statistics Regulation in September 2013. They comply with the standards of trustworthiness, quality and value in the Code of Practice for Statistics and should be labelled "accredited official statistics".