FOI reference: FOI-2026-3428
You asked:
I am requesting information concerning food businesses and the food market within your local authority area. Where such data is routinely recorded, please supply it for the period from 1 April 2019 to the present (or the most recent complete financial year), unless otherwise stated.
PRICES:
Producer Price Index (PPI) data for food products at the most granular level available: input prices and output prices for meat processing, fish processing, dairy, bakery, etc., monthly 2019-2024.
Consumer Price Index (CPI) data for food categories: meat (beef, lamb, pork, poultry), fish, dairy, bread/cereals, vegetables, fruit, at item level if available, monthly 2019-2024.
Any analysis of price transmission between PPI and CPI for food products.
NOTES:
Where exact figures are not readily available, please provide reasonable estimates or the closest available data.
If any section relates to functions not performed by your authority, please indicate this rather than treating it as 'information not held'.
If you estimate this request will exceed the cost limit, please contact me to discuss which sections to prioritise before issuing a refusal notice.
I am happy to receive data in whatever format is most convenient for your officers (Excel preferred, but PDF or other formats acceptable).
Where possible, if the data are already publicly available via your resources, wider local authority resources or other publicly available sources, please can you direct me accurately to such sources of data.
We said
Thank you for your request.
Producer Price Index (PPI)
The Producer Price Index (PPI) is produced by the Office for National Statistics (ONS). It is created on a national basis, which is not broken down into regional or local authority areas. The input price indices measure the monthly change in the prices of materials and fuels bought by UK manufacturers for processing; these include materials used in the final product and by the company in its normal day-to-day running. The output price (also referred to as the factory gate price) indices measure the monthly change in the price of goods sold by UK manufacturers; it includes costs such as labour, raw materials and energy as well as interest on loans, site or building maintenance, and rent, but it excludes taxes. These indices classify goods according to the economic activity that generates them, using the European statistical classification of products by activity, 2.1 (CPA 2.1) framework. This structure enables PPIs to accurately track price movements across industries and allows harmonised statistical comparisons. For information on the strengths and limitations of the data, methods used, and the data uses and users, please see our Producer Price Indices (PPI) quality and methodology information (QMI).
For the purposes of this request, Input and Output price indices (which are calculated on a 2015=100 basis) can be provided at the following levels:
Input PPI ("Inputs into the Production of ...") Input PPIs are available at the three-digit and four-digit classification levels, referred to as "Groups" and "Classes". These represent the most detailed levels at which Input PPIs are currently produced.
Output PPI ("Outputs of ... Products") Output PPIs are available at the four-digit classification level, referred to as "Classes". This is the most detailed level that is published, as more granular data are subject to statistical disclosure control. On occasion, certain four-digit Output PPI indices may also be withheld for the same disclosure control reasons.
For more detailed data, you may wish to consider the Secure Research Service. This provides access to more granular data (down to the six-digit classification level, referred to as "Sub-categories").
For Input PPI, the published information is provided both excluding and including 'Climate Change Levy (CCL)', with the former being the principal measure. The relevant indices (excluding CCL) are:
C101: Inputs into production of Preserved meat and meat products
C104: Inputs into production of Vegetable and animal oils and fats
C106: Inputs into production of Grain Mill Products, Starches and Starch Products
C107: Inputs into production of Bakery and farinaceous products
C1107: Inputs into production of Soft Drinks; Mineral Waters and Other Bottled Waters
The Output PPI, the relevant indices are:
C1020: Processed and preserved fish, crustaceans and molluscs
C1073: Macaroni, noodles, couscous and similar farinaceous products
Consumer Price Index (CPI)
Consumer price inflation is the rate at which the prices of goods and services bought by households rise or fall. It is estimated by using price indices. For an overview of the range of indices available and their uses, please see our Consumer price indices, a brief guide: 2017 and our Measuring changing prices and costs for consumers and households: December 2023 article.
CPI classifies household expenditures according to the COICOP (Classification of Individual Consumption According to Purpose) international hierarchical system. For the purposes of this FOI request, food comes under Division 01 ('Food and non-alcoholic beverages). As CPI classifies products under a different system to PPI, it should be noted that there is not a simple one-to-one mapping for products in each.
The principal sources of CPI data at COICOP Level are:
Tables 38 and 16 are most suited for this request. The former contains a longer run of indices to three decimal places, the latter contains a slightly finer breakdown, covering, for example, beef and veal, pork, and poultry.
For individual indices detailed in the 'Consumer price inflation tables'
For the period 2019 to 2024, CPI data were also published at a more granular, item level, for example, separating out beef mince and rump steak (but at a UK, not local authority, level). In addition, individual price quote data (for locally collected data only) were also published and can be analysed by region, though again not local authority level. The CPI dataset does not include a local authority marker with which to analyse the figures. The available lower-level data can be found at:
The item indices files on this page contain the unchained indices for each month. The price quotes files contain the individual price quotes with the region marker in column O. The "Glossary edition of this dataset" is a guide to the variables included in the other files.
We are in the process of changing the information released in the lower-level datasets. Changes to the provision of microdata outputs for consumer price inflation statistics: January 2026 describes the changes.
Price Transmission between PPI and CPI for Food Products
Research on this is typically conducted by academia or organisations such as the Bank of England, and the ONS have no formal responsibility in this area. The following are 2 recent examples: