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Quality and methodology information (QMI) on strengths, limitations, appropriate uses, and how the data were created is available in our Business investment QMI.

Revisions

In line with our National Accounts Revisions Policy, the data are open to revision from Quarter 1 (Jan to Mar) 2024 to Quarter 3 (July to Sept) 2025 for current price (CP) data and chained volume measure (CVM) estimates.

We analyse and explain revisions performance for business investment up to and including the release of the Blue Book 2025 consistent dataset, published 30 September 2025, in our Business investment in the UK revisions in Blue Book: 2025 article.

Data in this bulletin

All data in this bulletin are presented in CVM, unless otherwise specified. This means the effect of price changes is removed from the data (in other words, the data are deflated).

In Quarter 3 2025, the Quarterly Acquisitions and Disposals of Capital Assets Survey (QCAS) had a response rate of 76.3% for estimates used in the revised release. The QCAS is the largest data source for gross fixed capital formation (GFCF) and business investment.

Adjustments

Large capital expenditure is often reported later in the data collection period than smaller capital expenditure. This means that larger expenditures are often included in the revised (month three) results but are not reported in time for the provisional (month two) results. This can result in upward revisions in the later estimates for business investment and GFCF. Following investigation of the impact of this effect, a bias adjustment was introduced in the provisional estimate from Quarter 3 2013.

This adjustment was suspended in Quarter 3 2020 because of uncertainties surrounding the effect of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. However, the bias adjustment was reintroduced to business investment and GFCF after further investigation and analysis of its impact since Quarter 4 (Oct to Dec) 2021. As usual, we have removed the bias adjustment for the revised release.

Restarting of Producer Prices publications

We restarted publication of our monthly business prices publications on 22 October 2025. Business prices data with corrected chain-linking methods and updated historical weights have been used in our monthly gross domestic product (GDP) datasets for Producer Price Indices (PPI), Import Price Indices (IPI), Export Price Indices (EPI), and Service Producer Price Indices (SPPI) in this release. The quarterly SPPI estimates are splined to months for use in monthly GDP calculations.

These updates to business prices data will be incorporated in GDP estimates in line with our National Accounts Revisions Policy, becoming fully integrated for the entire time series in our Blue Book 2026 publication.

Further information on the chain-linking error and the impact of methodological changes in the producer prices dataset are detailed in our Impact of correction to chain-linking methodology used in PPI and SPPI: October 2025 article.

Accredited official statistics

These accredited official statistics were independently reviewed by the Office for Statistics Regulation in September 2013. They comply with the standards of trustworthiness, quality and value in the Code of Practice for Statistics and should be labelled “accredited official statistics”.

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