Index of Production, UK: March 2026

• Production output was estimated to have increased by 0.2% during Quarter 1 (Jan to Mar) 2026, compared with Quarter 4 (Oct to Dec) 2025.

• The main positive contribution in Quarter 1 2026 was from "manufacturing" (up 0.8%), followed by "electricity and gas" (up 0.6%); these were mostly offset by a fall from "mining and quarrying" (down 4.5%) and a smaller, supporting fall from "water supply and sewerage" (down 0.5%).

• 8 of the 13 subsectors in "manufacturing" increased during Quarter 1 2026, with the largest positive contributions being from "transport equipment" (up 5.7%) and "other manufacturing" (up 4.0%); within transport equipment, "motor vehicles, trailers and semi-trailers" increased by 10.9%, as the industry continued to recover from a cyber incident in September 2025.

• Monthly production output was estimated to have decreased by 0.2% in March 2026, which follows a rise in February 2026 (up 0.3%) and a fall in January 2026 (down 0.1%).

• The fall in monthly production output in March 2026 was mainly because of weakness in "electricity and gas" (down 4.3%), with supporting contributions from "mining and quarrying" (down 2.3%) and "water supply and sewerage" (down 1.6%); these were partially offset by strength in "manufacturing" (up 1.2%).

• The fall in "electricity and gas" (down 4.3%) was caused by "electric power generation, transmission and distribution" (down 6.0%).

• 10 of the 13 manufacturing subsectors saw increased output in March 2026, mainly caused by similarly-sized positive contributions from "transport equipment" (up 2.0%), "basic pharmaceutical products" (up 2.1%) and "basic metals" (up 2.1%).

All data related to the Index of Production (IoP) are available on our Related data page.

The Index of Production (IoP) uses data from a variety of sources. It is calculated by taking turnover and removing the effect of price changes, or by using direct volume estimates.

Most of these data are collected as "turnover values" through the Monthly Business Survey (MBS). Direct volume series are also collected by the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ), and the International Steel Statistics Bureau (ISSB) for steel industries.

The MBS is fully online. Business owners can log in from any location and submit their data at an appropriate time.

Value Added Tax (VAT) data have also been included for 64 production industries for small and medium-sized businesses from January 2018. More information is available in our VAT turnover data in National Accounts: background and methodology.

A comprehensive list of the IoP source data can be found in our Gross domestic product (GDP) data sources catalogue.

Response rates for March 2026

MBS response rates were 74.0% for March 2026, based on forms returned. This accounted for 87.8% of total turnover coverage of the sample population. For further information, see our Monthly Business Survey (production) response rates dataset.

Quality and methodology

The data reported in IoP bulletins and datasets are estimates that are subject to uncertainty, such as sampling variability and non-sampling error. More information is available in Section 2 of our Uncertainty and how we measure it for our surveys methodology.

More quality and methodology information (QMI) on strengths, limitations, appropriate uses, and how the data were created is available in our Index of Production, UK quality and methodology information (QMI).

Accredited official statistics

These accredited official statistics were independently reviewed by the Office for Statistics Regulation in April 2014. They comply with the standards of trustworthiness, quality, and value in the Code of Practice for Statistics, and should be labelled "accredited official statistics".

Revisions to Index of Production

This release gives data for March 2026 for the first time, with revisions open from January 2024.

We will be publishing data for April 2026 for the first time, with no previous periods open for revision, in our next IoP publication, publishing on 12 June 2026. For further details, please see our National Accounts Revisions Policy: updated January 2026 methodology.

Table 1 shows the revisions from the current release against the previous February 2026 IoP release, published on 16 April 2026.

Seasonal adjustment

The monthly estimates of IoP are seasonally adjusted. Seasonal adjustment is the process of removing the variations associated with the time of year, or the arrangement of the calendar, from a data time series.

IoP estimates, as for many data time series, are difficult to analyse using raw data because seasonal effects dominate short-term movements. Identifying and removing the seasonal component leaves the trend and irregular components.

We use the X-13-ARIMA-SEATS approach to seasonal adjustment. Seasonal adjustment parameters are monitored closely and are regularly reviewed. For more information, please see our Seasonal adjustment methodology.

In our IoP estimates, seasonal adjustment is applied at the industry level. The seasonally adjusted series are aggregated to create estimates by sector and total IoP output. As part of our quality assurance approach, residual seasonality checks are regularly completed by our time series analysis team on both the directly seasonally adjusted series and the indirectly derived aggregate time series.

This topic is explored further in our Assessing residual seasonality in published outputs methodology, updated on 30 September 2025.

Based on our quality assurance as part of this publication, there is no statistically significant residual seasonality in our aggregate estimates for the IoP in the period from January 1997 to March 2026.