Inflation across the United Kingdom (UK) went up to 8.7% as at April, according to the United Kingdom Office of National Statistics (ONS) Consumer Prices Index (CPI) measurement.

The ONS reports that the UK’s Consumer Prices Index including owner occupiers’ housing costs (CPIH) rose by 7.8% as at April 2023. Both the CPIH and the (CPI) in March 2023 were 8.9% & 10.1%, respectively.

On a monthly basis, the CPIH rose by 1.2% in April 2023 compared to an increase of 2.1% in April 2022, while CPI rose by 1.2% in April 2023, in comparison to a 2.5% rise in April 2022.

The ONS says, “The main drivers of the annual inflation rate for CPIH and CPI are the same where they are common to both measures. However, the owner occupiers’ housing costs (OOH) component accounts for around 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.”

Ease in annual inflation

The ease in April 2023’s annual inflation rate mainly reflects price changes in the housing and household services division, notably for gas and electricity. However, this was partially offset by upward effects coming from recreation and culture, alcoholic beverages and tobacco, communication, and transport.

The main driver behind the change was gas with monthly prices falling by 1.0% between March and April this year, compared with a rise of 66.8% between the same two months a year ago. 

According to the ONS, “This was the first time since October 2020 that monthly gas prices fell and meant that gas provided a downward contribution of 0.75 percentage points to the monthly change in CPIH.”

Food and non-alcoholic beverage prices continued to rise in April and contributed to high annual inflation, however, the annual inflation rate of food and non-alcoholic beverages eased from 19.2% in the year to March 2023, to 19.1% in the year to April 2023.

Core CPI (excluding energy, food, alcohol and tobacco) rose by 6.8% for April 2023, up from 6.2% in March, which the ONS noted is the highest rate since March 1992.