Private rental prices development plan, UK: updated October 2025

• Our Private rental prices development plan, UK: updated April 2025 article outlined our intentions for addressing the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR)'s requirements from their Spotlight on Quality Assessment: Price Index of Private Rents (PIPR) report.

• This article provides a brief update on additional progress made since our July 2025 publication, and we intend to update this release quarterly during 2025.

• On 30 October 2025, we published our response to feedback received from our recent user engagement between 18 June and 10 September 2025.

This section provides an update on progress made since the Private rental prices development plan, UK: updated July 2025 article and should be accompanied by the full information in Section 3: Publish more information on data collection and quality monitoring (Requirement 1) of the April 2025 article.

Meeting expected monthly volumes

We have engaged with data providers and successfully obtained permission to publish additional information on rents data volumes used within the Price Index of Private Rents (PIPR). These data have been published as an additional dataset alongside the PIPR statistical bulletin. Our PIPR data volumes dataset contains:

• data collection volumes by month, by property type and by geography

• data volumes used in the PIPR regression model, by month, by local authority in England and Wales and by broad rental market area in Scotland and Northern Ireland

Our PIPR data volumes dataset, published on 22 October 2025, contains data volumes information for the PIPR estimates for January 2024 to December 2024. In future, we aim to update this PIPR data volumes dataset on an annual basis, with data covering the previous calendar year.

Publication of this additional information on data volumes addresses Requirement 1 of the OSR's report relating to the publication of additional information on the volume, spread and variation of rents data collection and the data used by PIPR's regression model each month.

Quality and representativeness of Price Index of Private Rents statistics

As described in previous sections, we have successfully engaged with data suppliers to publish information on PIPR data volumes. The first edition of this dataset was published on 22 October 2025 containing data volumes information for the months of 2024.

This aims to support users' understanding of the quality and representativeness of the monthly dataset used by PIPR's regression model to produce PIPR price estimates, which, after combining with PIPR's annual weights, are representative of the rental stock.

This section provides an update on progress made since the Private rental prices development plan, UK: updated July 2025 article and should be accompanied by the full information in Section 4: Publish more detailed technical information on methods and rationale (requirement 2) of the April 2025 article.

In March 2025, we published additional technical information in the Price Index of Private Rents (PIPR) QMI and successfully achieved publication of previously redacted Technical Advisory Panel for Consumer Prices (APCP) papers.

In addition, we published our Price Index of Private Rents detailed methodology on 27 October 2025. This methodology provides detailed technical information, including:

• the methods used in PIPR

• the rationale behind important methodology decisions during PIPR's development

• an explanation of the similarities and differences between the PIPR methodology and the methodology of its discontinued predecessor, the Index of Private Housing Rental Prices (IPHRP)

This section provides an update on progress made since the Private rental prices development plan, UK: updated July 2025 article and should be accompanied by the full information in Section 5: Publish a summary of user feedback and plans for future user engagement (Requirement 3) of the April 2025 article.

User feedback summary

The previous response to the user request for additional breakdowns is updated as follows.

Users requested:

• estimates at additional breakdowns; for example, counties, UK excluding London, new versus existing tenancies

Response:

• we are expanding Price Index of Private Rent's (PIPR's) system capability to produce additional aggregation levels (such as counties and UK excluding London)

• we cannot produce a PIPR breakdown by "new" and "existing" tenancies because available rents data do not include this distinction, as explained in the "Coherence" subsection of Section 5: Quality characteristics of the PIPR data in the Price Index of Private Rents QMI and in our How we measure rental price inflation blog

We have updated the previous response to the user request for increased methodology clarification as follows.

Users requested:

• that the methodology should be clearer to understand; there are too many acronyms and complicated words

• more details on the application of the methodology, including a worked example

• further information on PIPR weighting and the methodology used

• further clarification regarding chain-linking and its use to link Index of Private Housing Rental Prices (IPHRP) to PIPR

Response:

• the Price Index of Private Rents QMI was updated in March 2025, including details on data sources and methods used to calculate PIPR weights, and additional details to support users' understanding of PIPR methods

• our How we measure rental price inflation blog explains how rental prices are used in PIPR, with a worked example

• in May 2025, we held a public webinar for users in which we provided an explanation of PIPR methods, strengths and limitations, aimed at non-technical user understanding; users can view the Understanding house and rent price statistics webinar

• we published our Price Index of Private Rents detailed methodology on 27 October 2025, providing more detailed technical information on the methods used in PIPR

• we will provide further accessible explanations of PIPR methods in 2026, such as an online video explainer

• the "Aggregation of elementary aggregates" subsection of Section 6: Methods used to produce the PIPR data in our Price Index of Private Rents QMI explains the standard chain-linking approach used by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) in price inflation statistics

• the "Creation of a historical series" subsection of Section 6: Methods used to produce the PIPR data in our Price Index of Private Rents QMI explains how IPHRP was chain-linked to PIPR to produce the longest time series possible

User engagement strategy

We continue to take a proactive approach in strengthening engagement with users of our data.

On 28 May 2025, we facilitated an interactive webinar for non-technical users of our data: Bricks, mortar and data: understanding house and rent prices, which was recorded. This was part of our Bringing data to life collection. The webinar, which featured a guest speaker representative from one of PIPR's rents data suppliers, included a questions and answers session for users to seek clarity on their understanding. We thank the users who attended and engaged with the session, for which we received positive feedback.

On 18 June 2025, we launched the Price Index of Private Rents user engagement survey. From 18 June to 10 September 2025, we invited all users to provide feedback. We asked:

• How do you use PIPR statistics?

• How well do PIPR statistics meet your needs?

• Where could we improve explanations of PIPR methods?

A summary of this user survey feedback and our response was published on 30 October 2025.

We are investigating options to make better use of the Statistics User Network (SUN) to engage with our users on a more frequent basis. We have already used the SUN to promote the PIPR user engagement survey, and will continue to use this channel to provide updates.

Further planned improvements to Price Index of Private Rents

Following the 18 June to 10 September 2025 user engagement, a summary of user feedback and our response was published on 30 October 2025.

Previous feedback received from users and stakeholders is summarised in Section 5: Publish a summary of user feedback and plans for future user engagement (requirement 3) of our updated April 2025 article. Further updates to some of our previous responses have been provided in Section 4: Publish a summary of user feedback and plans for future user engagement (Requirement 3) of this article.

In some cases, we have already taken action to meet these user requests, and some requests may be met during planned future work. In this release, the "response" provided has been updated with the latest developments to keep users informed of the outcome of their requests.

Plans for evaluating "in development" status of Price Index of Private Rents

In Section 5: Publish a summary of user feedback and plans for future user engagement (requirement 3) of our updated April 2025 article, we set out our engagement plan for the Price Index of Private Rents (PIPR). Objective 3 specifically focuses on how we will evaluate PIPR's "in development" status, though all aspects of the engagement plan are aimed at addressing the requirements set out in the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) report. Following the 18 June to 10 September 2025 user engagement, and the summary of user feedback and our response published on 30 October 2025, we will now assess how well the PIPR is meeting user needs, and what further development may be needed. This assessment, along with our previous work to meet the requirements from the OSR report, will form the basis of our evaluation of the "in development" status of the PIPR. The assessment will also inform our decision on the timeline for requesting a follow-up assessment for accredited official statistics status.

This development plan will be used to provide updates on our engagement plan, any further developments planned for the PIPR in response to user feedback, and any further updates on how we intend to evaluate the "in development" status of the PIPR.  We will also explore other forms of communication to provide users with more accessible updates.

Future timeline dates are estimates and are subject to change. Project milestones for 2025 include:

• publishing our response to the Office for Statistics Regulation's (OSR) recommendations, January 2025: complete

• publishing impact analysis for Northern Ireland transformation, January 2025: complete

• publishing decision on incorporation into official statistics, early 2025: complete

• publishing bulletin with Price Index of Private Rents (PIPR) covering all UK, March 2025: complete

• regular publishing of progress updates addressing Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR)'s requirements, 2025: ongoing

• user engagement following launch of PIPR UK, 2025: complete

• publishing of next progress update: January 2026