Quarterly sector accounts, UK: January to March 2025

• Real household disposable income per head decreased by 1.0% in Quarter 1 (Jan to Mar) 2025; this follows growth of 1.8% in Quarter 4 (Oct to Dec) 2024.

• The household saving ratio decreased to 10.9% in Quarter 1 2025, driven by a fall in non-pension saving; this is down from 12.0% in Quarter 4 2025.

• The UK’s borrowing position with the rest of the world as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP) is estimated to have increased to 3.2% in Quarter 1 2025, compared with 3.1% of GDP in Quarter 4 2024.

• Non-financial corporations net borrowing decreased to 1.6% of GDP in the latest quarter from 1.8% of GDP in Quarter 4 2024; within non-financial corporations, private non-financial corporations decreased their net borrowing to £12.4 billion from net borrowing of £14.0 billion in the previous quarter.

• Financial corporations switched to a net borrowing position of £1.2 billion in Quarter 1 2025, following net lending of £5.9 billion in the previous quarter.

• General government decreased their net borrowing to 5.7% of GDP in Quarter 1 2025 from 6.1% of GDP in Quarter 4 2024; this increase was driven by taxes on income and production.

Interactive glossary

Gross disposable household income (GDHI) and real household disposable income

Gross disposable household income (GDHI) is the estimate of the total amount of income that households have available to either spend, save or invest. GDHI includes income received from wages (and the self-employed), social benefits, pensions and net property income (that is, earnings from interest on savings and dividends from shares), less taxes on income and wealth.

Adjusting GDHI to remove the effects of inflation gives real household disposable income (RHDI). RHDI is a measure of the real purchasing power of households’ income, in terms of the physical quantity of goods and services they would be able to purchase if prices remained constant over time.

Household saving ratio

The household saving ratio estimates the amount of money households have available to save as a percentage of their gross disposable income, plus pension accumulations.

Net lending or borrowing

The net lending of a sector represents the surplus resources that a sector makes available to other sectors. Net borrowing represents their financing of a deficit from other sectors.

Net lending means a sector has money left over after its spending and investment in each period.

Net borrowing means it has spent and invested more than it received and has a need for financing, which may be covered by borrowing, issuing shares or bonds, or by drawing on reserves.

Revisions within this release

This bulletin includes new data for the latest available quarter – Quarter 1 (Jan to Mar) 2025 – with no revisions to previous data. This bulletin follows the National Accounts Revisions Policy.

The population estimates for 2023 onwards have been updated to use the migration variant projection. This is in line with the recommendation made in our National population projections: 2022-based bulletin, published on 28 January 2025.

Understanding the sector and financial accounts

This bulletin presents analysis on UK aggregate data for the main economic indicators and summary estimates from the institutional sectors of the UK economy presented in the UK Economic Accounts (UKEA) dataset. These institutional sectors include:

• public corporations

• private non-financial corporations

• financial corporations

• households

• non-profit institutions serving households (NPISH)

• central government

• local government

• the rest of the world

This bulletin uses data from the UKEA to provide detailed estimates of:

• national product, income and expenditure

• UK sector non-financial and financial accounts

• UK balance of payments

These accounts are the underlying data that produce a single estimate of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) using income, production and expenditure data.

Quality and methodology information report

Our Quarterly sector accounts quality and information (QMI) contains important information on:

• the strengths and limitations of the data, and how they compare with related data

• uses and users of the data

• how the output was created

• the quality of the output, including the accuracy of the data

System of National Accounts consultation

As part of an update to the System of National Accounts, the United Nations (UN) are in the process of consulting on several areas being considered for improvement. Previous and live consultations can be found on the UN Statistics Division’s Consultations page.

If you would like to discuss any of these consultations with us, please contact us at sna.consultations@ons.gov.uk. Bodies outside the UK national statistical system are also free to respond to the consultations.

Economic statistics governance after Brexit

New governance arrangements are being put in place following Brexit to support the adoption and implementation of high-quality standards for UK economic statistics. These governance arrangements will promote international comparability and add to the credibility and independence of the UK’s statistical system.

At the centre of this new governance framework will be the new National Statistician’s Committee for Advice on Standards for Economic Statistics (NSCASE). NSCASE will support the UK by ensuring its processes for influencing and adopting international statistical standards are world leading. The advice NSCASE provides to the National Statistician will span the full range of domains in economic statistics, including the national accounts, fiscal statistics, prices, trade and the balance of payments, and labour market statistics.