Consumer price inflation, UK: January 2025

• The Consumer Prices Index including owner occupiers' housing costs (CPIH) rose by 3.9% in the 12 months to January 2025, up from 3.5% in December 2024.
• On a monthly basis, CPIH was little changed in January 2025, compared with a 0.4% fall in January 2024.   

• The Consumer Prices Index (CPI) rose by 3.0% in the 12 months to January 2025, up from 2.5% in the 12 months to December 2024.

• On a monthly basis, CPI fell by 0.1% in January 2025, compared with a 0.6% fall in January 2024. 

• The largest upward contribution to the monthly change in both CPIH and CPI annual rates came from transport, and food and non-alcoholic beverages; the largest downward contribution to both came from housing and household services.

• Core CPIH (excluding energy, food, alcohol and tobacco) rose by 4.6% in the 12 months to January 2025, up from 4.2% in December 2024; the CPIH goods annual rate rose from 0.7% to 1.0%, while the CPIH services annual rate rose from 5.4% to 5.8%.

• Core CPI (excluding energy, food, alcohol and tobacco) rose by 3.7% in the 12 months to January 2025, up from 3.2% in December 2024; the CPI goods annual rate rose from 0.7% to 1.0%, while the CPI services annual rate rose from 4.4% to 5.0%.

The Consumer Prices Index including owner occupiers' housing costs (CPIH) rose by 3.9% in the 12 months to January 2025, up from 3.5% in December 2024 (Figure 1).

On a monthly basis, CPIH was little changed in January 2025, compared with a 0.4% fall in January 2024.   

The owner occupiers' housing costs (OOH) component of CPIH rose by 8.0% in the 12 months to January 2025, unchanged from the 12 months to December 2024. This is the joint-highest annual rate since February 1992 in the constructed historical series. OOH costs rose by 0.4% on the month, the same rate as a year earlier.

The Consumer Prices Index (CPI) rose by 3.0% in the 12 months to January 2025, up from 2.5% in December 2024.

On a monthly basis, CPI fell by 0.1% in January 2025, compared with a 0.6% fall in January 2024. 

The main drivers of the annual inflation rate for CPIH and CPI are the same where they are common to both measures. However, the OOH component accounts for approximately 17% of the CPIH and is the main driver for differences between the CPIH and CPI inflation rates. This makes CPIH our most comprehensive measure of inflation. We cover this in more detail in Section 4: Latest movements in CPIH inflation and provide a commentary on the CPI in Section 5: Latest movements in CPI inflation. We also cover both CPIH and CPI in Section 3: Notable movements in prices, though the figures reflect CPIH.

Figure 2 shows the contributions from the 12 divisions to the change in the annual Consumer Prices Index including owner occupiers' housing costs (CPIH) inflation rate between December 2024 and January 2025. These sum to the change in the annual rate between the latest two months, that is, the rise from 3.5% to 3.9%.

The increase in the rate into January 2025 reflected upward contributions from six divisions and downward contributions from five divisions. The largest upward contribution came from transport and the largest downward contribution came from housing and household services.

Transport

Overall prices in the transport division rose by 1.7% in the year to January 2025, compared with a fall of 0.6% in the year to December 2024 (Figure 3). On a monthly basis, prices fell by 0.5% in January 2025, compared with a fall of 2.8% a year ago.

The change in the annual rate was mainly the result of upward effects from air fares and from motor fuels, partially offset by a downward effect from secondhand cars.

Air fares tend to rise into December and fall into January (figure 4). However, in December 2024 and January 2025, this pattern was less pronounced than in previous years. The monthly rise in December 2024 was the third-lowest December rise since monthly price collection began in 2001, and part of the reason for this lower-than-usual growth may be because the return date for the European flights in December 2024's index was Christmas Eve, and the return date for long-haul flights was New Year's Eve.

The weaker growth into December 2024 led to a smaller fall than normal into January 2025. Air fares fell by 19.0% on the month in January 2025, up from negative 38.9% a year ago. This was the smallest January fall since January 2020 and is what led to the large positive change in contribution to the annual rate of CPIH between December 2024 and January 2025.

The average price of petrol rose by 0.8 pence per litre between December 2024 and January 2025 to stand at 137.1 pence per litre, down from 139.9 pence per litre in January 2024. Diesel prices rose by 1.5 pence per litre in January 2025 to stand at 144.1 pence per litre, down from 148.3 pence per litre in January 2024. These movements resulted in overall motor fuel prices falling by 2.2% in the year to January 2025, up from a fall of 5.0% in the year to December 2024.

Prices of secondhand cars fell by 0.4% in January 2025, compared with a monthly rise of 1.5% a year ago. On an annual basis, prices fell by 0.9% in the year to January 2025, compared with a rise of 1.0% in the year to December 2024.

Food and non-alcoholic beverages

Food and non-alcoholic beverage prices rose by 3.3% in the year to January 2025, up from 2.0% in December 2024.

Prices for this division rose by 0.9% in January 2025, up from a monthly fall of 0.4% a year ago. The annual rate of 3.3% in January 2025 compares with 7.0% to January 2024.   

There were upward contributions to the change in the annual rate of inflation between December 2024 and January 2025 in 7 of the 11 food and non-alcoholic beverages classes. This is because prices rose this year but either fell or rose at a slower rate between the same two months last year. The contributions came from:

• meat (0.04 percentage points (pp))

• bread and cereals (0.03pp) 

• fish (0.01pp)

• milk, cheese and eggs (0.01pp)

• sugar, jam, honey, syrups, chocolate and confectionery (0.01pp)

• coffee, tea and cocoa (0.01pp)

• mineral waters, soft drinks and juices (0.01pp)  

The other four classes were little changed. 

Further details on the items that provided notable upward and downward contributions to the change in the annual rate can be found in our Consumer price inflation detailed briefing note.

Education

The annual inflation rate for education was 7.5% in the year to January 2025, up from 5.0% in December 2024. On a monthly basis, prices rose by 2.4% in January 2025, but did not change a year ago.

The only item that changed price in the education division was private school fees, where prices rose by 12.7% on the month but did not change a year ago. A contributing factor to the rise in private school fees may have been education and boarding services provided by private schools becoming subject to VAT at the standard rate of 20%.

Housing and household services

The annual inflation rate for housing and household services was 5.6% in the year to January 2025, down from 6.0% in December 2024. On a monthly basis, prices rose by 0.5% in January 2025, compared with a rise of 0.9% a year ago.

The 0.4 percentage-point decrease in the annual rate between December 2024 and January 2025 was mainly the result of downward effects from gas (a decrease of 0.07pp) and electricity (a decrease of 0.05pp). Gas prices rose by 1.3% between December 2024 and January 2025 having risen by 6.8% a year ago. Electricity prices rose by 1.2% between December 2024 and January 2025, having risen by 4.0% a year ago.

Owner occupiers' housing (OOH) costs rose by 8.0% in the year to January 2025, the same rate as in December 2024. The latest figure is the joint-highest since February 1992 when the rate was 8.6% in the constructed historical series.

Figure 5 shows the annual inflation rates for the Consumer Prices Index including owner occupiers' housing costs (CPIH) series for all goods and all services, together with CPIH excluding energy, food, alcohol and tobacco (often referred to as core CPIH). The CPIH inflation rate is added for comparison.

The CPIH all services index rose by 5.8% in the year to January 2025, up from 5.4% in December 2024. This is the highest rate since August 2024, and the largest upward contributions to the change in the annual rate came from transport services (particularly passenger transport by air) and miscellaneous and other services (particularly education).

The CPIH all goods index rose by 1.0% in the year to January 2025, up from 0.7% in the 12 months to December. This is the highest rate since February 2024 and the largest upward contributions to the change in the annual rate came from food and non-alcoholic beverages (particularly meat, and bread and cereals) and non-energy industrial goods (particularly motor fuels).

The core CPIH annual inflation rate was 4.6% in the year to January 2025, up from 4.2% in December 2024. This the highest rate since March 2024.

Figure 6 shows the extent to which the distinct categories of goods and services have contributed to the overall annual CPIH inflation rate over the last two years. The contribution of each category to the annual rate depends on the price movement in that category as well as its weight, which is updated annually.

The largest upward contributions to the annual CPIH inflation rate in January 2025 came from the housing and household services, restaurants and hotels, and recreation and culture divisions.

The contribution from the transport division was the largest since February 2023.

Figure 7 shows the contribution of owner occupiers' housing costs (OOH) and Council Tax to the annual CPIH inflation rate in the context of wider housing-related costs. The Consumer Prices Index (CPI) differs from the CPIH because it does not include these two components.

OOH's contribution rose from 1.30 to 1.31 percentage points between December 2024 and January 2025. This was the 13th consecutive month that the contribution from OOH grew stronger.

While the Consumer Prices Index including owner occupiers' housing costs (CPIH) is our lead and most comprehensive measure of consumer price inflation, the Consumer Prices Index (CPI) is based on a harmonised methodology developed by Eurostat and allows for international comparisons to be drawn. For more information on the use cases for our consumer price inflation statistics, please refer to our Measuring changing prices and costs for consumers and households: December 2023 article.

Figure 8 shows annual CPI inflation for the UK against the European Union (EU) average and selected Group of Seven (G7) countries. While the UK CPI is produced on a comparable basis with EU countries, the United States Harmonised Index of Consumer Prices (HICP) measure differs in some respects (see Footnote 1 of Figure 8). The UK's CPI inflation rate of 3.0% was above the first (or "flash") estimates of inflation for France (1.8%) and Germany (2.8%) in the 12 months to January 2025.

Figure 9 shows the annual inflation rates for the CPI all goods and all services series, together with CPI excluding energy, food, alcohol and tobacco (often referred to as core CPI). The headline CPI inflation rate is added for comparison.

The CPI all services index rose by 5.0% in the year to January 2025, up from 4.4% in December 2024. The rate was last higher in August 2024.

The CPI all goods index rose by 1.0% in the year to January 2025, up from 0.7% in the year to December 2024. This is the highest rate since February 2024.

The core CPI annual inflation rate was 3.7% in the year to January 2025, up from 3.2% in December 2024. This is the highest rate since April 2024.

As with the all-items annual inflation rates, the drivers of CPIH and CPI goods and services inflation are the same (with the exception of owner occupiers' housing costs (OOH) and Council Tax, which are excluded from CPI). The drivers are discussed in more detail in Section 4: Latest movements in CPIH inflation.

Figure 10 shows how each of the main groups of goods and services contributed to the change in the annual CPI inflation rate between December 2024 and January 2025.

The rise in the annual CPI rate into January 2025 reflected upward contributions from six divisions, partially offset by a downward contribution from five divisions. The largest upward contributions came from transport, food and non-alcoholic beverages, and education.

Although the sizes of the contributions differ from CPIH, the main drivers to the change are the same where they are common to both measures.

Figure 11 shows the extent to which the distinct categories of goods and services have contributed to the overall annual CPI inflation rate over the last two years.

The CPIH includes extra housing components not included in the CPI. This can result in the largest contributions to the annual CPI and CPIH inflation rates coming from different divisions. In January 2025, the largest-contributing division to CPI was recreation and culture (0.54 percentage point contribution to the CPI rate) whereas the largest-contributing division to CPIH was housing and household services. OOH had a large upward contribution to housing and household services in CPIH, but is excluded from CPI.

Please see information about the move from sample items to broader consumption segments in Section 8: Data sources and quality.

Annual inflation rate

The most common approach to measuring inflation is the 12-month or annual inflation rate, which compares prices for the latest month with the same month a year ago. In any given month, the annual rate is determined by the balance between upward and downward price movements across the range of goods and services included in the index.

Consumer price inflation

Consumer price inflation is the rate at which the prices of goods and services bought by households rise or fall. It is estimated by using price indices. For an overview of the range of indices available and their uses, please see our Consumer price indices, a brief guide: 2017 and our Measuring changing prices and costs for consumers and households: December 2023 article.

CPIH

The Consumer Prices Index including owner occupiers' housing costs (CPIH) is the most comprehensive measure of inflation. It extends the Consumer Prices Index (CPI) to include a measure of the costs associated with owning, maintaining and living in one's own home, known as owner occupiers' housing costs (OOH), along with Council Tax. Both are substantial expenses for many households and are not included in the CPI.

CPI

The CPI is a measure of consumer price inflation produced to international standards and is based on European regulations for the Harmonised Index of Consumer Prices. The CPI is the inflation measure used in the government's target for inflation.

The CPI is produced at the same level of detail as the CPIH in our accompanying dataset and accompanying data time series.

Owner occupiers' housing (OOH) costs

OOH costs are the costs of housing services associated with owning, maintaining and living in one's own home.

RPI

The Retail Prices Index (RPI) does not meet the required standard for designation as an accredited official statistic. In recognition that it continues to be widely used in contracts, we continue to publish the RPI, its subcomponents, and RPI excluding mortgage interest payments (RPIX). To view the all-items RPI, please see the data time series section of the inflation and price indices area of our website. The annual RPI inflation rate was 3.6% in January 2025.

The UK Statistics Authority (The Authority) and HM Treasury launched a consultation in 2020 on The Authority's proposal to address the shortcomings of the RPI. From 2030 (at the earliest), as outlined in The Authority's response to the consultation, the CPIH methods and data sources will be introduced into the RPI. Additionally, the supplementary and lower-level indices of the RPI will be discontinued.

Classification Of Individual Consumption According to Purpose (COICOP)

The Classification of Individual Consumption According to Purpose (COICOP) is the classification that underpins some of the main statistics produced by the Office for National Statistics (ONS). The classification has seen a substantial update (PDF, 2.51MB) in recent years, to reflect changes in household expenditure patterns since its inception in the late 1990s. The UK currently uses the version of COICOP introduced in 1999.

We will ensure that the new classification is implemented in a comprehensive and reliable manner that considers other ONS priorities around the transformation of our main statistics. To meet this objective, we will aim to introduce the new classification (COICOP 2018) as soon as possible, as part of our wider plans to implement the updated System of National Accounts (SNA25). However, this is likely to be later than the date for implementation in some other countries. We will share our implementation plan in due course.

For further information please contact cpi@ons.gov.uk.

Passenger transport by air

While we already publish a monthly index for passenger transport by air, from 26 March 2025, we will also publish annual price indices and weights split by domestic flights, European flights and long-haul flights.

Alternative data sources

We are undertaking a programme of transformation across our consumer price statistics, including identifying new sources, improving methods and developing systems. More information about the project and our ongoing transformation plans can be found in our Transformation of consumer price statistics: August 2024 article, released on 6 August 2024. We also published our updated development plan to outline the rationale for our priorities and their potential impact.

We also plan to introduce improved imputation methods, consumption segments and Northern Ireland private rental price statistics as part of our ongoing improvements. These method changes will be introduced into our headline measures (CPI, CPIH, and RPI) from February 2025 (to be published on 26 March 2025) and the Household Costs Indices from February 2025 (to be published on 29 May 2025). We have published an impact analysis to provide users with indicative improvements to our consumer price statistics from January 2019 to June 2024.

As usual, we welcome your feedback on our work by email to cpi@ons.gov.uk.

Weights for 2025 consumer price inflation statistics

In line with usual practice at the start of each year, the expenditure weights used in compiling the Consumer Prices Index including owner occupiers' housing costs (CPIH) and the Consumer Prices Index (CPI) have been calculated using updated spending information. The first update of weights has been implemented in this month's indices, with the second update of weights along with the usual basket update to follow in the February index. We will publish an article explaining updates to CPI weights and an article explaining the update to the CPI basket of goods and services on 18 March 2025.

Owing to the unprecedented events of the last few years and the larger changes seen in spending patterns in 2021, 2022 and 2023, in the years immediately preceding 2024, we adjusted the spending data so that the resulting weights were more reflective of the year immediately before use in consumer price inflation. More information is available in our Consumer price inflation, updating weights articles.

Since the final coronavirus (COVID-19) lockdown occurred in 2021, we reverted to our standard methodology and used unadjusted spending data to produce the 2024 CPIH and CPI weights. The weights for the Retail Prices Index (RPI) were not adjusted for changed spending patterns in 2021 to 2023. We will now continue to use the unadjusted spending data for ongoing weights updates.

In line with the improvements introduced last year, we now use unrounded weights in compiling CPIH and CPI. The weights prior to 2024 for the CPI and CPIH were rounded to integers as parts per thousand of the all items indices at the class level (4-digit COICOP). The RPI will continue to be based on integer weights.

Households and the cost of living

To assist individuals in understanding how the rise in inflation affects their expenditure, we have produced a personal inflation calculator. The calculator allows users to enter the amount they spend across either a reduced or a wide range of categories, to produce an estimate of their personal inflation based on those spending patterns.

Our shopping prices comparison tool shows how the average prices of items have changed over time. However, please note the shopping prices comparison tool will not update with February 2025 data on 26th March 2025. This is to allow us to update the tool to account for the changes we plan to bring in as part of the planned improvements to our consumer price statistics. For more information on the improvements we plan to introduce from February 2025 (published in March 2025) please see Impact analysis on transformation of UK consumer price statistics - Office for National Statistics. 

Please also note that from next month table 55 in our Consumer price inflation dataset, which provides a time series of prices for petrol and for diesel, will no longer be published as this series has been discontinued. However, historic average prices will still be available using the CDID explorer function on the website using CZML for diesel and CZMK for petrol.   

On 28 November 2024, we published our quarterly Household Costs Indices (HCIs) for UK household groups bulletin. The HCIs reflect how different types of households experience changing prices and differ from CPIH and CPI, which are based on recognised economic principles, and which provide an aggregate measure of inflation for household spending in the UK.

The HCIs are official statistics in development and this release included new estimates for July to September 2024. It was not possible for this latest release to update the weights for 2024 in line with the standard methodology for consumer prices. This is because of delays in processing the underlying survey data and the need for further ongoing quality assurance. Instead, the most recent estimates have been compiled using the weights for February to December 2023. We aim to update the weights in the second quarter (April to June) of 2025.

Consumer price inflation historical estimates, UK, 1950 to 1988

On 18 May 2022, we published our Consumer price inflation, historical estimates, UK, 1950 to 1988 – methodology and our Consumer price inflation, historical estimates and recent trends, UK: 1950 to 2022 article. These include new estimates of CPIH and improved estimates of CPI for the period 1950 to 1988. These estimates (published in response to user need for a longer series) are indicative and are for analytical purposes only. They are not intended for official use and do not constitute part of the accredited official statistic series.

Previously, in December 2018, we published our Consumer Prices Index including owner occupiers' housing costs (CPIH) historical series: 1988 to 2004 article. This series is also not an accredited official statistic, reflecting the historical uncertainty around the backcasts.

Moving from sample items to broader consumption segments

Please note that the move from sample items to broader consumption segments (see the impact analysis article we published in January 2025) means there will be an impact on the individual price quotes and lower level indices we publish from March 2025. These outputs will be updated and presented in an improved format to help users transition to the use of consumption segments and other methodological changes we are making in 2025.

We have published an updated Glossary edition of our Consumer price inflation item indices and price quotes dataset this month, which sets out the changes that will be made from March 2025.

Methodology information

The consumer price indices are normally based on prices collected from outlets around the country, supplemented by information collected centrally over the internet and by phone. The figures in this publication use data collected on or around 14 January 2025.

Our Consumer price indices, a brief guide gives an overview of consumer price statistics, while our Consumer prices indices technical manual covers the concepts and methodologies underpinning the indices in more detail.

Our CPIH Compendium provides a comprehensive source of information on the CPIH, focusing on the approach to measuring owner occupiers' housing costs.

Our Users and uses of consumer price inflation statistics: July 2018 update includes information on the users and uses of these statistics, and the characteristics of the different measures of inflation in relation to potential use.

Strengths and limitations

We illustrated our approach to Measuring changing prices and costs for consumers and households most recently in December 2023 using three "use cases", and described how they relate to the measures published and under development.

The three cases refer firstly to the Consumer Prices Index including owner occupiers' housing costs (CPIH) as our lead measure of inflation based on economic principles. They also refer to the Household Costs Indices (HCIs) as a set of measures that reflect the change in costs and prices experienced by different households, and the Retail Prices Index (RPI) as a legacy measure that is required to meet existing user needs. Our Shortcomings of the RPI as a measure of inflation article describes the issues with the RPI.

Accredited official statistics

These accredited official statistics were independently reviewed by the Office for Statistics Regulation in July 2017. They comply with the standards of trustworthiness, quality and value in the Code of Practice for Statistics and should be labelled "accredited official statistics".