Night club entry fees have been removed from the basket of goods and services used by the Office for National Statistics to calculate CPI, as part of the basket’s annual review. In recent years the number of night clubs in Britain has declined, with many high profile closures. In addition, many of those that remain have removed entry charges. As such it has become harder to collect entry prices.
CD Roms and rewritable DVDs have also both been removed, reflecting the change in the computer market away from physical media and towards downloadable files while computer software, such as for word processing, antivirus or web design, and downloaded computer games have been added to the basket.
Additions include coffee pods, with this new type of coffee machine seeing growing popularity, and cream liqueur (such as Baileys).
Commenting, CPI statistician Phil Gooding said: “With the number of night clubs charging entry declining, we can no longer justify keeping these fees in the basket.”
The new basket features 704 items, of which 15 are new this year, with 14 other items being removed and 13 being modified.
ONS uses the items in the basket of goods and services to calculate consumer price inflation. ONS collects around 110,000 individual prices each month from 20,000 shops across the UK, as well as a further 70,000 prices online. The 'weight' of each item – its relative importance in calculating CPI – is based on survey evidence of people's spending gathered by ONS from its own sources and commercial market research. Thus low-cost items purchased by relatively few people will have much less influence on the rate of inflation than higher-value products bought in large numbers.
Background Notes
- The full ‘Consumer Price Inflation: The 2016 Basket of Goods and Services’ article is available on our website.
- Details of the policy governing the release of new data are available from the media office.
- National Statistics are produced to high professional standards set out in the Code of Practice for Official Statistics. They undergo regular quality assurance reviews to ensure that they meet customer needs. They are produced free from any political interference.
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