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The
Office for National Statistics, which is modernizing the way it
gets information on the economy, said the move in March 2025
represented the biggest update so far of its inflation data
gathering, covering 50% of the grocery market.
Currently, ONS price collectors go into shops to gather 25,000
prices per month but the new system will cover approximately 300
million price points derived from sales of over a billion units
of products per month, the agency said.
The new system will improve the breadth of products covered by
the ONS, gather prices across the entire month rather than on a
specific day and tell the ONS about quantities sold, capturing
changes in consumer behavior in response to price changes.
Last year, the agency began using a new source of digital data
covering all consumer train fares and this year it increased the
number of price points for second-hand cars from 105 to 300,000
per month.
The ONS will continue to use price collectors to measure how
prices have changed in smaller grocery shops and other outlets.
(Writing by William Schomberg, editing by Andy Bruce)
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