Business investment in the UK: January to March 2025 provisional results

Estimates of short-term indicators of investment in non-financial assets; business investment, and asset and sector breakdowns of total gross fixed capital formation.

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Contact:
Email Gross Capital Formation team

Release date:
15 May 2025

Next release:
30 June 2025

1. Main points

  • UK business investment increased by 5.9% in Quarter 1 (Jan to Mar) 2025 and is 8.1% above the level in the same quarter a year ago.

  • This release contains datasets for the Quarter 1 2025 business investment provisional results; for further commentary on these data please see our Gross domestic product (GDP) first quarterly estimate bulletin, linked in Section 4.

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2. Data on business investment

Gross fixed capital formation by sector and asset
Dataset | Released 15 May 2025
Sector and asset breakdowns of gross fixed capital formation (GFCF), including business investment and revisions.

Quarterly Stocks Survey (QSS) and Quarterly Acquisitions and Disposals of Capital Assets Survey (QCAS) textual data analysis
Dataset | Released 15 May 2025
Based on qualitative responses from businesses to our Quarterly Acquisitions and Disposals of Capital Assets Survey (QCAS) and Quarterly Stocks Survey (QSS).

Annual gross fixed capital formation by industry and asset
Dataset | Released 01 November 2024
Annual estimates of gross fixed capital formation (investment) by industry and asset, in current prices and chained volume measures, consistent with the UK National Accounts.

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3. Data sources and quality

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

Revisions

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

Data in this bulletin

All data in this bulletin, unless specified, are presented in chained volume measure (CVM), otherwise known as "real" measure. This means the effect of price changes is removed from the data (in other words, the data are deflated).

In Quarter 1 (Jan to Mar) 2025, 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 64.7% 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 3) results but are not reported in time for the provisional (Month 2) results. This can result in upward revisions in the later estimates for business investment and GFCF. Following investigation of the impact of this effect, from Quarter 3 (July to Sept) 2013, an option to include a bias adjustment was introduced in the provisional estimate to help manage uncertainty around these early estimates.

This adjustment approach was suspended in Quarter 3 2020 because of uncertainties surrounding the effect of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. However, the option to include a bias adjustment was reintroduced to business investment and GFCF, after further investigation and analysis of its impact since Quarter 4 (Oct to Dec) 2021. The bias adjustment for this provisional release is £1.6 billion.

Accredited official statistics

These accredited official statistics were independently reviewed by the Office for Statistics Regulation in September 2013. They comply with the standards of trustworthiness, quality and value in the Code of Practice for Statistics and should be labelled "accredited official statistics".

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5. Cite this statistical bulletin

Office for National Statistics (ONS), released 15 May 2025, ONS website, statistical bulletin, Business investment in the UK: January to March 2025 provisional results

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Contact details for this Statistical bulletin

Gross Capital Formation team
gcf@ons.gov.uk
Telephone: +44 1633 455250