Energy, goods and services used by UK businesses: 2024

• Intermediate consumption, or expenditure on energy, goods and services used as inputs to UK business processes, showed a small increase between 2023 and 2024.

• The products with the highest expenditure (excluding energy- related products) included "computer programming, consultancy and related services", "rental and leasing services", "advertising and market research services", "real estate services", and "buildings and buildings construction works"; these groupings made up almost one-fifth of total intermediate consumption.

The product values in the Energy, goods and services used by UK businesses dataset are constrained to Annual Business Survey estimates of intermediate consumption, where equivalent industries are available.

As in previous years, industry groupings that contain different types of businesses should also be treated with caution. Survey methodology assumes a level of similarity between companies in the same groupings. These "catch all" groupings within the Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) can give volatile product patterns, depending on which companies happen to be selected. Some of these groupings include:

• Division 32 – Other manufacturing
• Division 96 – Other personal service activities
• Division 74 – Other professional, scientific and technical activities

Since 2020, there have been changes to the questionnaire to allow for the reporting of wood and wood products under energy consumption. Caution should therefore be taken when comparing with earlier releases of the datasets for the following product groupings of the Statistical Classification of Products by Activity (CPA):

• 01 – products of agriculture, hunting and related services
• 02 – products of forestry, logging and related services
• 06 – crude petroleum and natural gas
• 16 – wood and products of wood and cork, except furniture; articles of straw and plaiting materials
• 19 – coke and refined petroleum products and other potentially related categories

For SIC Section K Financial and insurance activities – industries 64 to 66, as with other business surveys, there are reporting issues with industry groupings that contain trusts because the survey is based on the Inter-Departmental Business Register (IDBR). Trusts are not listed on the IDBR, and therefore the coverage of the financial industries is problematic. Our intention is to drop Section K in future, please contact us at abaps@ons.gov.uk if you have views on this.

Official statistics in development

These statistics are labelled as "official statistics in development". Until September 2023, these were called "experimental statistics". Read more about the change in our Guide to official statistics in development.

These statistics are based on information from the Annual Purchases Survey. We are developing how we collect and produce the data to improve the quality of these statistics.

Once the developments are complete, we will review the statistics with the Statistics Head of Profession. We will decide whether the statistics are of sufficient quality and value to be published as official statistics, or whether further development is needed. Production may be stopped if they are not of sufficient quality or value. Users will be informed of the outcome and any changes.

We value your feedback on these statistics. Contact us at abaps@ons.gov.uk.