18 March 2020
As announced on 9 August 2019, an error occurred in the Living Cost and Food (LCF) Survey which was found to impact the Family spending in the UK: April 2017 to March 2018 datasets.
This affected, to a small degree, most estimates of average expenditure. The overall impact was that average weekly household expenditure in the UK was underestimated by around 0.5%, while the interpretation of the statistics remained the same.
The error was due to the imputation of data collected through a diary being incorrect for three quarters of the financial year in the LCF. The datasets have now been corrected. We apologise for any inconvenience. Please contact carla.kidd@ons.gov.uk for more information.
