Consumer trends, UK: January to March 2023

• In Quarter 1 (Jan to Mar) 2023, household spending growth (adjusted for inflation) was 0.0% compared with Quarter 4 (Oct to Dec) 2022; when compared with Quarter 1 2022, household spending increased by positive 0.2%.

• The largest positive contribution to growth in Quarter 1 2023 was from recreation and culture.

• The largest negative contribution to growth in Quarter 1 2023 was from transport.

• When compared with Quarter 4 2019 (pre-coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic), household spending decreased by negative 2.3%.

The quarterly consumer trends data are typically published around 90 days after the end of the quarter.

This release contains data that are consistent with the UK National Accounts, The Blue Book: 2022, released on 31 October 2022. As such, data for all periods within this release are subject to revision in line with the National Accounts Revisions Policy.

The Blue Book is the UK's annual compendium of national accounts data and incorporates a number of improvements to methods and sources into the UK's National Accounts. Details of improvements introduced in Blue Book 2022, which affect household expenditure and revisions to the previous publication, can be found in our User guide to consumer trends.

The reference year and last base year for all chained volume measure estimates is 2019.

Further information on latest developments and changes implemented in Blue Book 2022 can be found in our Proposed changes to be implemented in Blue Book and Pink Book 2022 article.

We have produced an update to the Classification of Individual Consumption by Purpose (COICOP) to Classification of Products by Activity (CPA) mapper for 2020.

Household final consumption expenditure (HHFCE) includes spending on goods and services, except for:

• buying or extending a house
• investment in valuables (for example, paintings and antiques)
• purchasing second-hand goods

Explanations for these exceptions and the related concepts are available in our Consumer trends QMI.

Quality

More quality and methodology information on strengths, limitations, appropriate uses, and how the data were created is available in our Consumer trends QMI.

Impact of coronavirus (COVID-19)

From Quarter 1 (Jan to Mar) 2020, estimates of household final consumption expenditure (HHFCE), along with other components of gross domestic product (GDP), are subject to more uncertainty than usual. This is because of the challenges we faced in collecting the data under government-imposed public health restrictions. In the case of HHFCE, these challenges have been compounded by the suspension of data collection for the International Passenger Survey (IPS) between March 2020 and January 2021, and the temporary suspension of the Living Costs and Food survey (LCF) between 16 March and 14 April 2020.