Index of Services, UK: February 2026

• Services output was estimated to have increased by 0.5% in the three months to February 2026, compared with the previous three months to November 2025.

• 10 of the 14 sectors showed growth in the three months to February 2026, with the main positive contributing sectors being "wholesale and retail trade" (up 1.4%) and "information and communication" (up 1.6%).

• 4 of the 14 sectors showed a decline in the three months to February 2026, with the main contributor being "administrative and support service activities" (down 0.8%).

• Monthly services output was estimated to have increased by 0.5% in February 2026; this follows successive rises in January 2026 (0.1%) and December 2025 (0.3%).

• There were monthly increases in 12 of the 14 sectors in February 2026; the largest positive contribution on the month came from "administrative and support service activities" (up 2.0%) and "wholesale and retail trade" (up 0.7%).

• There were monthly decreases in 1 of the 14 sectors (1 sector had flat growth) in February 2026; the only fall on the month came from "accommodation and food service activities" (down 0.3%).

All data related to the Index of Services are available on our Related data page.

Response rates for February 2026 

The response rates for February 2026 were 74.3% based on forms returned. This accounted for 88.5% of total turnover coverage of the sample population. For further information, see our Current and historical Monthly Business Survey (MBS) (services) response rates dataset. 

Data sources and collection 

The Index of Services (IoS) is compiled using data from several different sources (share of overall economy based on latest gross value added (GVA) weights). These include the: 

• Office for National Statistics (ONS) MBS (34.9%) 

• ONS Retail Sales Inquiry (4.8%)  

• ONS Government Expenditure (15.3%) 

• ONS Households' Expenditure (11.2%) 

• ONS Finance Expenditure (8.0%) 

• ONS Households and non-profit institutions serving households (1.9%) 

• Other (3.6%) 

The MBS data are published alongside this release in our MBS turnover of services industries dataset. 

For further information on what is included within "other", please see our Gross domestic product (GDP(o)) data sources catalogue. 

The percentage of each data source is based on their gross value added weight. 

Our IoS methods and sources pages provide more information on the data that underpin these statistics; of particular note is our GDP(o) data sources catalogue.

Value Added Tax (VAT) data are also included for small and medium-sized businesses to help inform estimates. For more information, see our VAT turnover data in National Accounts: background and methodology. 

Quality and methodology 

The data reported in IoS bulletins and datasets are estimates that are subject to uncertainty, for example, sampling variability and non-sampling error. For more information on these, see 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 Services Quality and Methodology Information.

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 Services 

This release gives data for February 2026 for the first time. We have been open to revisions from January 2024. This includes the revisions published in the GDP quarterly national accounts, UK: October to December 2025 as well as further revisions because of improved seasonal adjustment and data sources.

In our next IoS publication on 14 May 2026, we will open for revision back to January 2024. Please see the National Accounts Revisions Policy: updated January 2026 for further details.

Table 1 shows the revisions from the current release against the previous IoS release (January 2026) published on 13 March 2026.

Seasonal adjustment 

The monthly estimates of IoS 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. 

IoS 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. 

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

In our IoS estimates seasonal adjustment is applied at the industry level and the seasonally adjusted series are aggregated to create estimates by sector and total IoS 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 also the indirectly derived aggregate time series. 

This topic is explored further in our Assessing residual seasonality in published outputs article 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 IoS in the period from January 1997 to February 2026.

From the next IoS release, which will be published on 14 May 2026, we will be publishing non-seasonally adjusted chained volume measure series in addition to our current datasets.