Index of Services, UK: March 2026

• Services output for Quarter 1 (January to March) 2026 was estimated to have increased by 0.8% compared with Quarter 4 (October to December) 2025.

• In Quarter 1 2026, 11 of the 14 sectors saw an increase, with the main positive contributing sectors being “wholesale and retail trade” (up 2.0%), “information and communication” (up 1.7%), and “professional, scientific, and technical activities (up 1.2%).

• In Quarter 1 2026, 3 of the 14 sectors saw a decrease, with “administrative and support service activities” (down 1.0%), providing the largest negative contribution.

• Monthly services output was estimated to have increased by 0.3% in March 2026, this follows a rise in February 2026 (0.5%), and no growth in January 2026 (0.0%).

• There were monthly increases in 11 of the 14 sectors in March 2026; the largest positive contribution on the month came from “information and communication” (up 1.1%).

• There were monthly decreases in 2 of the 14 sectors (1 sector had no growth (0.0%) ) in March 2026 with “wholesale and retail trade” (down 0.2%) providing the largest negative contribution.

All data related to the Index of Services are available on our Related data page. 

Response rates for March 2026

The response rates for March 2026 were 70.7 % based on forms returned. This accounted for 85.7% of total turnover coverage of the sample population. For further information, see our Current and historical Monthly Business Survey (MBS) (services) response rates dataset.

Data sources and collection

The Index of Services (IoS) is compiled using data from several different sources (share of overall economy based on latest gross value added (GVA) weights). These include the:

• Office for National Statistics (ONS) MBS (34.9%)
• ONS Retail Sales Inquiry (4.8%)
• ONS Government Expenditure (15.3%)
• ONS Households’ Expenditure (11.2%)
• ONS Finance Expenditure (8.0%)
• ONS Households and non-profit institutions serving households (1.9%)
• Other (3.6%)

The MBS data are published alongside this release in our MBS turnover of services industries dataset.

For further information on what is included within “other”, please see our Gross domestic product (GDP(o)) data sources catalogue. 

The percentage of each data source is based on their gross value added weight.

Our IoS methods and sources pages provide more information on the data that underpin these statistics; of particular note is our GDP(o) data sources catalogue.

Value Added Tax (VAT) data are also included for small and medium-sized businesses to help inform estimates. For more information, see our VAT turnover data in National Accounts: background and methodology.

Quality and methodology

The data reported in IoS bulletins and datasets are estimates that are subject to uncertainty, for example, sampling variability and non-sampling error. For more information on these, see Section 2 of our Uncertainty and how we measure it for our surveys methodology.

More quality and methodology information (QMI) on strengths, limitations, appropriate uses, and how the data were created is available in our Index of Services Quality and Methodology Information.

Accredited official statistics

These accredited official statistics were independently reviewed by the Office for Statistics Regulation in April 2014. They comply with the standards of trustworthiness, quality, and value in the Code of Practice for Statistics and should be labelled “accredited official statistics”.

Revisions to Index of Services

This release gives data for March 2026 for the first time, with revisions open from January 2024.

In our next IoS publication on 12 June 2026, we will be publishing data for April 2026 for the first time, with no previous periods open for revision. Please see the National Accounts Revisions Policy: updated January 2026 for further details.

Table 1 shows the revisions from the current release against the previous IoS release (February 2026) published on 16 April 2026.

Seasonal adjustment

The monthly estimates of IoS are seasonally adjusted. Seasonal adjustment is the process of removing the variations associated with the time of year, or the arrangement of the calendar, from a data time series.

IoS estimates, as for many data time series, are difficult to analyse using raw data because seasonal effects dominate short-term movements. Identifying and removing the seasonal component leaves the trend and irregular components.

We use the X-13-ARIMA-SEATS approach to seasonal adjustment. Seasonal adjustment parameters are monitored closely and regularly reviewed. For more information, please see our seasonal adjustment methodology page.

In our IoS estimates seasonal adjustment is applied at the industry level and the seasonally adjusted series are aggregated to create estimates by sector and total IoS output. As part of our quality assurance approach, residual seasonality checks are regularly completed by our time series analysis team on both the directly seasonally adjusted series and also the indirectly derived aggregate time series.

This topic is explored further in our Assessing residual seasonality in published outputs article updated on 30 September 2025. 

Based on our quality assurance as part of this publication, there is no statistically significant residual seasonality in our aggregate estimates for the Index of Services in the period from January 1997 to January 2026.

From the next IoS release which will be published on 12 June 2026, we will be publishing non-seasonally adjusted chained volume measure series in addition to our current datasets.