Index of Services, UK: September 2025

• Services output was estimated to have increased by 0.2% in Quarter 3 (July to Sept) 2025, compared with Quarter 2 (Apr to June) 2025.

• This is the seventh consecutive quarterly rise in quarterly services output; however, the rate of growth has slowed in Quarter 3 2025 as this follows increases of 0.7% and 0.4% in Quarter 1 (Jan to Mar) and Quarter 2 2025, respectively.

• 9 of the 14 sectors showed growth in Quarter 3 2025, with the main positive contributing sectors being "arts, entertainment and recreation" (up 3.5%), "real estate activities" (up 0.3%) and "public administration and defence" (up 0.8%).

• 4 of the 14 sectors (one sector saw flat growth) showed a decline in Quarter 3 2025, with the main contributors being "professional, scientific and technical activities" (down 0.6%) and "other services" (down 3.4%).

• Monthly services output was estimated to have increased by 0.2% in September; this follows successive 0.1% falls in both July and August 2025.

• There were monthly increases in 8 of the 14 sectors in September 2025; the largest positive contributions came from "wholesale and retail trade" (up 1.4%), "information and communication" (up 0.8%) and "education" (up 0.8%).

• There were monthly decreases in 6 of the 14 sectors in September 2025, like the Quarter 3 2025 falls; the largest negative contributions in the month came from "professional, scientific and technical activities" (down 0.9%) and "other services" (down 2.9%).

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

Response rates for September 2025

The response rates for September 2025 were 71.0%, based on forms returned. This accounted for 84.6% 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 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 Services

In line with the National Accounts Revision Policy this release is open for revision for July and August 2025. 

Table 1 shows the revisions to Index of Services (IoS) and its main sectors from July 2025 to August 2025 since the last publication on 16 October 2025.

Non-market education output methodology

School attendance data are used as our source to estimate education output by the non-market sector. Education is considered to be provided across the whole year and so school holidays or school leavers do not reduce output over the summer. As attendance levels are not available over the summer, the June 2025 value was carried forward. Now that we have data for September 2025, we have recalculated the July and August 2025 estimates based on the change in attendance between June and September.

Restarting of Producer Prices publications

Following the restart of monthly business prices publications on 22 October 2025, business prices data with corrected chain linking methods and updated historic weights have been used in the IoS dataset for producer price indices (PPI), import prices indices (IPI), export price indices (EPI), and service producer price indices (SPPI) for July, August and September 2025 in this release. The quarterly SPPI estimates are splined to months for use in monthly GDP calculations.

These updates to business prices data will be incorporated in IoS estimates in line with our national accounts revisions policy.

Further information on the chain linking error and the impact of methodological changes in the producer prices dataset are detailed in our Impact of correction to chain-linking methodology used in Producer Price Indices and Services Producer Price Indices: October 2025 article, published on 22 October 2025.

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 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.