Business investment in the UK: October to December 2023 provisional results

• UK business investment increased by 1.5% in Quarter 4 (Oct to Dec) 2023 and is 3.7% above where it was the same quarter a year previous.

• Annual UK business investment increased by 6.1% in 2023.

• This release contains datasets for Quarter 4 2023 business investment provisional results; for further commentary on these data please see our statistical bulletin GDP first quarterly estimate, UK: October to December 2023.

Quality and methodology information on strengths, limitations, appropriate uses and how the data were created is available in the Business investment Quality and Methodology Information (QMI).

Revisions

In line with the National Accounts Revisions Policy, the earliest period open for revision in this publication is Quarter 1 (Jan to Mar) 2023.

Data within this bulletin

All data within this bulletin, unless specified, are presented in chained volume measure (CVM). This means it has the effect of price changes removed (in other words, the data are deflated).

In Quarter 4 (Oct to Dec) 2023, the Quarterly Acquisitions and Disposals of Capital Assets Survey (QCAS), the largest data source for gross fixed capital formation (GFCF) and business investment, had a response rate of 64.5% for estimates used in the provisional release.

Adjustments

Large capital expenditure tends to be reported later in the data collection period than smaller capital expenditure. This means that larger expenditures are often included in the revised (month 3) results but are not reported in time for the provisional (month 2) results. This can lead to a tendency toward upward revisions in the later estimates for business investment and gross fixed capital formation (GFCF). Following investigation of the impact of this effect, from Quarter 3 (July to Sept) 2013, a bias adjustment was introduced in the provisional estimate; this bias adjustment is later removed in the revised release.

This adjustment was suspended in Quarter 2 (Apr to June) 2020 because of uncertainties surrounding the effect of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. However, since Quarter 4 (Oct to Dec) 2021, after further investigation and analysis of its impact, the bias adjustment was reintroduced to business investment and GFCF. The bias adjustment for this provisional release is £1.5 billion.