Consumer price inflation, UK: December 2024

• The Consumer Prices Index including owner occupiers' housing costs (CPIH) rose by 3.5% in the 12 months to December 2024, unchanged from November.
• On a monthly basis, CPIH rose by 0.3% in December 2024, down from 0.4% in December 2023.

• The Consumer Prices Index (CPI) rose by 2.5% in the 12 months to December 2024, down from 2.6% in the 12 months to November.

• On a monthly basis, CPI rose by 0.3% in December 2024, down from 0.4% in December 2023.

• The largest downward contribution to the monthly change in both CPIH and CPI annual rates came from restaurants and hotels; the largest upward contribution to both came from transport.

• Core CPIH (excluding energy, food, alcohol, and tobacco) rose by 4.2% in the 12 months to December 2024, down from 4.4% in November; the CPIH goods annual rate rose from 0.4% to 0.7%, while the CPIH services annual rate fell from 5.7% to 5.4%.

• Core CPI (excluding energy, food, alcohol, and tobacco) rose by 3.2% in the 12 months to December 2024, down from 3.5% in November; the CPI goods annual rate rose from 0.4% to 0.7%, while the CPI services annual rate fell from 5.0% to 4.4%.

The Consumer Prices Index including owner occupiers' housing costs (CPIH) rose by 3.5% in the 12 months to December 2024. This is unchanged from November and down from a recent peak of 9.6% in October 2022 (Figure 1).

On a monthly basis, CPIH rose by 0.3% in December 2024, down from 0.4% in December 2023.

The owner occupiers’ housing costs (OOH) component of CPIH rose by 8.0% in the 12 months to December 2024, up from 7.8% in the 12 months to November. This is the highest annual rate since February 1992 in the constructed historical series. OOH costs rose by 0.6% on the month, compared with a 0.4% increase a year earlier.

The Consumer Prices Index (CPI) rose by 2.5% in the 12 months to December 2024. This is down from 2.6% in November, and well below its recent peak of 11.1% in October 2022.

On a monthly basis, CPI rose by 0.3% in December 2024, down from 0.4% in December 2023.

The main drivers of the annual inflation rate for CPIH and CPI are the same where they are common to both measures. However, the OOH component accounts for approximately 16% of the CPIH and is the main driver for differences between the CPIH and CPI inflation rates. This makes CPIH our most comprehensive measure of inflation. We cover this in more detail in Section 4: Latest movements in CPIH inflation and provide a commentary on the CPI in Section 5: Latest movements in CPI inflation. We also cover both CPIH and CPI in Section 3: Notable movements in prices, though the figures reflect CPIH.

Figure 2 shows the contributions from the 12 divisions to the change in the annual Consumer Prices Index including owner occupiers' housing costs (CPIH) inflation rate between November and December 2024. These sum to the change in the annual rate between the latest two months, which in this instance is zero.

The unchanged rate into December 2024 reflected downward contributions from five divisions and upward contributions from four divisions. The largest downward contribution came from restaurants and hotels, and the largest upward contribution came from transport.

Restaurants and hotels

The annual inflation rate for restaurants and hotels was 3.4% in December 2024. This is down from 4.0% in November and is the lowest annual rate since July 2021. On a monthly basis, prices fell by 0.1%, compared with a rise of 0.5% a year ago.

The easing in the annual rate mainly reflected a downward effect from hotels, where prices fell by 1.9% on the month, compared with a rise of 3.1% a year ago. Restaurants and cafes provided a smaller downward effect, where prices rose by 0.2% on the month. This is down from the 0.3% monthly rise a year ago.  

Alcohol and Tobacco

Prices in the alcohol and tobacco division fell by 0.2% between November and December 2024, compared with a rise of 1.2% a year ago. On an annual basis, prices rose by 5.3% in the year to December 2024. This is down from a rise of 6.8% in the year to November.   

The easing in the annual rate mainly reflected a downward effect from tobacco, where prices rose by 0.7% on the month, compared with a rise of 4.1% in December 2023. The rise in December 2023 was influenced by an increase in tobacco duty in November 2023. The rise in December 2024 was not as heavily influenced by an increase in tobacco duty in October 2024.

The easing in the divisional rate was offset slightly by an upward effect from alcoholic beverages, which fell by 1.1% on the month, compared with a fall of 1.6% a year ago. Prices of wine also fell by 1.1% on the month, compared with a fall of 1.6% a year ago, leading to a positive contribution to the change in the annual rate.    

Food and non-alcoholic beverages

Food and non-alcoholic beverage prices rose by 2.0% in the year to December, unchanged from November 2024. The annual rate of 2.0% is down from a recent high of 19.2% in March 2023, which was the highest annual rate for over 45 years.

Prices for this division rose by 0.5% between November and December 2024, the same rate as a year ago. The annual rate of 2.0% in December 2024 compares with 8.0% in December 2023.   

There were downward contributions to the change in the annual rate of inflation between November and December 2024 in 2 of the 11 food and non-alcoholic beverages classes. This is because prices were either unchanged or rose at a lower rate between November and December than the rate of growth between the same two months last year. These contributions came from:

• bread and cereals 

• mineral waters, soft drinks, and juices 

There were upward contributions to the change in the annual rate of inflation between November and December 2024 in 2 of the 11 food and non-alcoholic beverages classes. This is because prices rose this year but were either unchanged or fell between the same two months last year. These contributions came from:

• fruit 

• sugar, jam, honey, syrups, chocolate, and confectionery  

There was little change in the other seven classes.

Further details on the items that provided notable upward and downward contributions to the change in the annual rate can be found in our Consumer price inflation detailed briefing note.

Transport

Overall prices in the transport division fell by 0.6% in the year to December 2024, compared with a fall of 1.1% in the year to November (Figure 4). On a monthly basis, prices rose by 1.0% in December 2024, up from 0.6% a year ago.

The change in the annual rate was mainly the result of upward effects from motor fuels and secondhand cars, partially offset by a downward effect from air fares.

The average price of petrol rose by 1.4 pence per litre between November and December 2024 to stand at 136.2 pence per litre, down from 142.8 pence per litre in December 2023. Diesel prices rose by 2.0 pence per litre in December 2024 to stand at 142.5 pence per litre, down from 151.4 pence per litre in December 2023. These movements resulted in overall motor fuel prices falling by 5.0% in the year to December 2024, up from a fall of 10.9% in the year to November.

Prices of secondhand cars fell by 0.6% between November and December 2024, compared with a fall of 2.8% a year ago. On an annual basis, prices rose by 1.0% in the year to December 2024, compared with a fall of 1.3% in the year to November. The annual rate was negative for 16 consecutive months before the rise in December 2024.

Air fares rose by 16.2% on the month in December 2024, down from 57.1% a year ago. It is normal for fares to rise into December. However, the rise in December 2024 was the lowest December rise since December 2019, and it is the third-lowest December rise since monthly price collection began in 2001. Part of the reason for the lower-than-usual growth may be because the return date for the European flights in this month's index was Christmas Eve and the return date for long-haul flights was New Year's Eve.

Housing and household services

The annual inflation rate for housing and household services was 6.0% in December 2024, up from 5.8% in November. This compares with a recent peak of 11.8% observed in January and February 2023. On a monthly basis, prices rose by 0.4% in December 2024, compared with a rise of 0.3% a year ago.

The 0.2 percentage point increase in the annual rate between November and December 2024 reflected upward effects from owner occupiers' housing (OOH) costs and, to a lesser extent, liquid fuels. OOH costs rose by 8.0% in the year to December 2024, up from 7.8% in November. The latest figure is the highest since February 1992, when the rate was 8.6% in the constructed historical series.

Figure 5 shows the annual inflation rates for the Consumer Prices Index including owner occupiers' housing costs (CPIH) series for all goods and all services, together with CPIH excluding energy, food, alcohol, and tobacco (often referred to as core CPIH). The CPIH inflation rate is added for comparison.

The CPIH all services index rose by 5.4% in the 12 months to December 2024, down from 5.7% in November. This is the lowest rate since January 2023. The largest downward contribution to the change in the annual rate came from transport (particularly passenger transport by air).

The CPIH all goods index rose by 0.7% in the 12 months to December 2024, up from 0.4% in the 12 months to November. There were upward contributions to the change in the annual rate from energy (particularly motor fuels), non-energy industrial goods (particularly secondhand cars), and non-processed food (particularly fruit).

The core CPIH annual inflation rate was 4.2% in December 2024, down from 4.4% in November.

Figure 6 shows the extent to which the distinct categories of goods and services have contributed to the overall annual CPIH inflation rate over the last two years. The contribution of each category to the annual rate depends on the price movement in that category, as well as its weight, which is updated annually.

The largest upward contributions to the annual CPIH inflation rate in December 2024 came from the housing and household services, restaurants and hotels, and recreation and culture divisions. There were partially offsetting downward contributions from transport, and furniture and household goods.

The contribution from the housing and household services division was the largest since September 2023.

Figure 7 shows the contribution of owner occupiers' housing costs (OOH) and Council Tax to the annual CPIH inflation rate, in the context of wider housing-related costs. The Consumer Prices Index (CPI) differs from the CPIH because it does not include these two components.

OOH's contribution rose from 1.27 to 1.30 percentage points between November and December 2024. It was the main influence behind the increased contribution from housing and household services to the annual CPIH inflation rate in December 2024.

While the Consumer Prices Index including owner occupiers' housing costs (CPIH) is our lead and most comprehensive measure of consumer price inflation, the Consumer Prices Index (CPI) is based on a harmonised methodology developed by Eurostat and allows for international comparisons to be drawn. For more information on the use cases for our consumer price inflation statistics, please refer to our Measuring changing prices and costs for consumers and households: December 2023 article.

Figure 8 shows CPI inflation for the UK against the EU average and selected G7 countries. While the UK CPI is produced on a comparable basis with EU countries, the US Harmonised Index of Consumer Prices (HICP) measure differs in some respects (see Footnote 1 of Figure 8). The UK's CPI inflation rate of 2.5% was above the first (or "flash") estimates of inflation for France (1.8%), but below that of Germany (2.8%) in the 12 months to December 2024.

Figure 9 shows the annual inflation rates for the CPI all goods and all services series, together with CPI excluding energy, food, alcohol, and tobacco (often referred to as core CPI). The headline CPI inflation rate is added for comparison.

Core CPI rose by 3.2% in the year to December 2024, down from 3.5% in December 2024. The CPI all goods index rose by 0.7% in the year to December 2024, up from 0.4% in the year to November. The CPI all services index rose by 4.4% in the year to December 2024, down from 5.0% in November. This is the lowest rate since March 2022.

As with the all-items annual inflation rates, the drivers of CPIH and CPI goods and services inflation are the same (except for owner occupiers' housing costs (OOH) and Council Tax, which are excluded from CPI). The drivers are discussed in more detail in Section 4: Latest movements in CPIH inflation.

Figure 10 shows how each of the main groups of goods and services contributed to the change in the annual CPI inflation rate between November and December 2024.

The fall in the rate into December 2024 reflected downward contributions from five divisions, partially offset by an upward contribution from four divisions. The largest downward contributions came from restaurants and hotels, alcohol and tobacco, and clothing and footwear.

Although the sizes of the contributions differ from CPIH, the main drivers to the change are the same where they are common to both measures.

Figure 11 shows the extent to which the distinct categories of goods and services have contributed to the overall annual CPI inflation rate over the last two years.

The CPIH includes extra housing components not included in the CPI. This can result in the largest contributions to the annual CPI and CPIH inflation rates coming from different divisions. The largest-contributing division to CPI was restaurants and hotels (0.49 percentage point contribution to the CPI rate), whereas the largest-contributing division to CPIH was housing and household services in December 2024. OOH had a large upward contribution to housing and household services in CPIH, but is excluded from CPI.

Annual inflation rate

The most common approach to measuring inflation is the 12-month or annual inflation rate, which compares prices for the latest month with the same month a year ago. In any given month, the annual rate is determined by the balance between upward and downward price movements across the range of goods and services included in the index.

Consumer price inflation

Consumer price inflation is the rate at which the prices of goods and services bought by households rise or fall. It is estimated by using price indices. For an overview of the range of indices available and their uses, please see our Consumer price indices, a brief guide: 2017 and our Measuring changing prices and costs for consumers and households: December 2023 article.

CPIH

The Consumer Prices Index including owner occupiers' housing costs (CPIH) is the most comprehensive measure of inflation. It extends the Consumer Prices Index (CPI) to include a measure of the costs associated with owning, maintaining and living in one's own home, known as owner occupiers' housing costs (OOH), along with Council Tax. Both are significant expenses for many households and are not included in the CPI.

CPI

The CPI is a measure of consumer price inflation produced to international standards and is based on European regulations for the Harmonised Index of Consumer Prices. The CPI is the inflation measure used in the government's target for inflation.

The CPI is produced at the same level of detail as the CPIH in our accompanying dataset and accompanying data time series.

Owner occupiers' housing (OOH) costs

OOH costs are the costs of housing services associated with owning, maintaining and living in one's own home.

RPI

The Retail Prices Index (RPI) does not meet the required standard for designation as an accredited official statistic. In recognition that it continues to be widely used in contracts, we continue to publish the RPI, its subcomponents, and RPI excluding mortgage interest payments (RPIX). To view the all-items RPI, please see the data time series section of the inflation and price indices area of our website. The annual RPI inflation rate was 3.4% in December 2024.

The UK Statistics Authority (The Authority) and HM Treasury launched a consultation in 2020 on The Authority's proposal to address the shortcomings of the RPI. From 2030 (at the earliest), as outlined in The Authority's response to the consultation, the CPIH methods and data sources will be introduced into the RPI. Additionally, the supplementary and lower-level indices of the RPI will be discontinued.

Classification Of Individual Consumption According to Purpose (COICOP)

The Classification of Individual Consumption According to Purpose (COICOP) is the classification that underpins some of the main statistics produced by the Office for National Statistics (ONS). The classification has seen a significant update (PDF, 2.51MB) in recent years to reflect changes in household expenditure patterns since its inception in the late 1990s. The UK currently uses the version of COICOP introduced in 1999.

To ensure the implementation of the new classification is done in a comprehensive and robust manner and while taking into consideration other ONS priorities around the transformation of our main statistics, we will aim to introduce the new classification (COICOP 2018) as soon as possible, as part of our wider plans to implement the updated System of National Accounts (SNA25). This, however, is likely to be later than the date for implementation in some other countries. We will share our implementation plan in due course.

For further information please contact cpi@ons.gov.uk.

Passenger transport by air

While we already publish a monthly index for passenger transport by air, from 26 March 2025 we will also publish annual price indices and weights split by domestic flights, European flights and long-haul flights.

Alternative data sources

We are undertaking a programme of transformation across our consumer price statistics, including identifying new sources, improving methods and developing systems. More information about the project and our ongoing transformation plans can be found in our Research and developments in the transformation of UK consumer price statistics article, released on 1 December 2023. This includes information on the transformation of consumer price statistics on secondhand cars and private rents, which we introduced with the February 2024 index, and our proposed approach to outlier detection in grocery scanner data.

As part of our plans, we updated our transformation overview on 6 August 2024, as well as publishing our updated development plan to outline the rationale for our priorities and their potential impact.

As usual, we welcome your feedback on our work by email to cpi@ons.gov.uk.

Weights for 2024 consumer price inflation statistics

In line with usual practice at the start of each year, the expenditure weights used in compiling the consumer price inflation statistics were updated in March 2024. For the Consumer Prices Index including owner occupiers' housing costs (CPIH) and the Consumer Prices Index (CPI), they were calculated using national accounts household final consumption expenditure (HHFCE) data for 2022. This is in line with our standard methodology of using data lagged by two years.

It differs from the approach used over the last few years, when there were large changes seen in spending patterns because of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. Over these years, we adjusted the spending data so that the resulting weights were more reflective of the year immediately before use in consumer price inflation. More information on weights updating is available in our Consumer price inflation, updating weights articles.

The weights for the Retail Prices Index (RPI) were also updated for 2024 in line with the practice followed both before and during the pandemic period, with no additional adjustment to the spending data because of any coronavirus effects.

The weights used to produce the CPI and CPIH have historically been rounded to integers as parts per thousand of the all-items indices. From 2024, we are now using unrounded weights in compiling the indices. The RPI continues to be based on integer weights.

Households and the cost of living

To assist individuals in understanding how the rise in inflation affects their expenditure, we have produced a personal inflation calculator. The calculator allows users to enter the amount they spend across either a reduced or a wide range of categories, to produce an estimate of their personal inflation based on those spending patterns.

Our shopping prices comparison tool shows how the average prices of items have changed over time. As a result, the number of average price series in Table 55 in our Consumer price inflation dataset has been reduced to two, covering petrol and diesel, and Table 54 has been discontinued. The average price data originally presented in these tables are currently still available as time series on our website and can be found using the four-character identifiers in Table 55.

On 28 November 2024, we published our quarterly Household Costs Indices (HCIs) for UK household groups bulletin. The HCIs reflect how different types of households experience changing prices and differ from CPIH and CPI, which are based on recognised economic principles and which provide an aggregate measure of inflation for household spending in the UK.

The HCIs are official statistics in development and this release included new estimates for July to September 2024. It was not possible for this latest release to update the weights for 2024 in line with the standard methodology for consumer prices. This is because of delays in processing the underlying survey data and the need for further ongoing quality assurance. Instead, the most recent estimates have been compiled using the weights for February to December 2023. We aim to update the weights in the second quarter (April to June) of 2025.

Consumer price inflation historical estimates, UK, 1950 to 1988

On 18 May 2022, we published our Consumer price inflation, historical estimates, UK, 1950 to 1988 - methodology and Consumer price inflation, historical estimates and recent trends, UK: 1950 to 2022 article. These include new estimates of CPIH and improved estimates of CPI for the period 1950 to 1988. These estimates (published in response to user need for a longer series) are indicative and are for analytical purposes only. They are not intended for official use and do not constitute part of the accredited official statistic series.

Previously, in December 2018, we published our Consumer Prices Index including owner occupiers' housing costs (CPIH) historical series: 1988 to 2004 article. This series is also not an accredited official statistic, reflecting the historical uncertainty around the backcasts.

Methodology information

The consumer price indices are normally based on prices collected from outlets around the country, supplemented by information collected centrally over the internet and by phone. The figures in this publication use data collected on or around 10 December 2024.

Our Consumer price indices, a brief guide gives an overview of consumer price statistics, while our Consumer prices indices technical manual covers the concepts and methodologies underpinning the indices in more detail.

Our CPIH Compendium provides a comprehensive source of information on the CPIH, focusing on the approach to measuring owner occupiers' housing costs.

Our Users and uses of consumer price inflation statistics: July 2018 update includes information on the users and uses of these statistics, and the characteristics of the different measures of inflation in relation to potential use.

Strengths and limitations

We illustrated our approach to Measuring changing prices and costs for consumers and households most recently in December 2023 using three "use cases", and described how they relate to the measures published and under development.

The three cases refer firstly to the Consumer Prices Index including owner occupiers' housing costs (CPIH) as our lead measure of inflation based on economic principles. They also refer to the Household Costs Indices (HCIs) as a set of measures that reflect the change in costs and prices experienced by different households, and the Retail Prices Index (RPI) as a legacy measure that is required to meet existing user needs. Our Shortcomings of the RPI as a measure of inflation article describes the issues with the RPI.

Accredited official statistics

These accredited official statistics were independently reviewed by the Office for Statistics Regulation in July 2017. They comply with the standards of trustworthiness, quality and value in the Code of Practice for Statistics and should be labelled "accredited official statistics".