Consumer trends, UK: January to March 2025

• In Quarter 1 (January to March) 2025, household spending growth (adjusted for inflation) was positive 0.4% compared with Quarter 4 (October to December) 2024.

• The largest positive contribution to growth in Quarter 1 2025 was from Housing and Energy Services (showing a 0.4% increase compared with Quarter 4 2024)

• The largest negative contribution to growth in Quarter 1 2025 was from Miscellaneous, Good and Services (showing a 0.6% decrease compared with Quarter 4 2024

• Compared with the same quarter a year ago (Quarter 1 2024), household spending was positive 0.9%

• This release contains datasets for Consumer trends Quarter 1 2025; for further commentary on these data please see our Gross domestic product (GDP) Quarterly National Accounts  

Household Final Consumption Expenditure (HHFCE) includes spending on goods and services, except for:

• buying or extending a house

• investment in valuables (for example, paintings and antiques)

• purchasing secondhand goods

Explanations for these exceptions and the related concepts are available in our Consumer trends QMI.

Data in this bulletin

The quarterly consumer trends data are typically published around 90 days after the end of the quarter.

All data in this bulletin, unless specified, are presented in chained volume measure (CVM), otherwise known as "real" measures. This means the effect of price changes is removed from the data (in other words, the data are deflated).

The reference year and last base year for all chained volume measure estimates is 2022.

Revisions

This release contains data that are consistent with the GDP quarterly national accounts, UK: January to March 2025, published on 30 June 2025. In line with the National Accounts Revisions Policy, there are no periods open for revision in this publication.

Impact of coronavirus (COVID-19)

In Quarter 1 (January to March) 2020, estimates of HHFCE, along with other components of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), are subject to more uncertainty than was the case previously. This is because of the challenges we faced in collecting the data under government-imposed public health restrictions. In the case of HHFCE, these challenges were compounded by the suspension of data collection for the International Passenger Survey (IPS) between March 2020 and January 2021, and the temporary suspension of the Living Costs and Food survey (LCF) between 16 March and 14 April 2020.

Quality

More quality and methodology information on strengths, limitations, appropriate uses, and how the data were created is available in our Consumer trends QMI

Accredited official statistics

These accredited official statistics were independently reviewed by the Office for Statistics Regulation in January 2012. They comply with the standards of trustworthiness, quality and value in the Code of Practice for Statistics and should be labelled "accredited official statistics".