Business investment in the UK: January to March 2024 provisional results

• UK business investment increased by 0.9% in Quarter 1 (Jan to Mar) 2024 and is 0.6% below where it was for the same quarter a year ago. 

• This release contains datasets for Quarter 1 2024 business investment provisional results; for further commentary on these data please see our statistical bulletin GDP first quarterly estimate, UK: January to March 2024.

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

Revisions

In line with the National Accounts Revisions Policy, there are no periods open for revision in this publication. 

Data within this bulletin

All data within this bulletin, unless specified, are presented in chained volume measure (CVM). This means it has the effect of price changes removed (in other words, the data are deflated).

In Quarter 1 2024, the Quarterly Acquisitions and Disposals of Capital Assets Survey (QCAS), the largest data source for gross fixed capital formation (GFCF) and business investment, had a response rate of 63.4% for estimates used in the provisional release.

Adjustments

Large capital expenditure tends to be 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 lead to a tendency toward upward revisions in the later estimates for business investment and gross fixed capital formation (GFCF). Following investigation of the impact of this effect, from Quarter 3 (July to Sept) 2013, a bias adjustment was introduced in the provisional estimate; this bias adjustment is later removed in the revised release.

This adjustment was suspended in Quarter 2 (Apr to June) 2020 because of uncertainties surrounding the effect of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. However, since Quarter 4 (Oct to Dec) 2021, after further investigation and analysis of its impact, the bias adjustment was reintroduced to business investment and GFCF. The bias adjustment for this provisional release is £1.5 billion.