15 March 2021
As announced on 4 March 2021, an error occurred in the Living Cost and Food (LCF) Survey which was found to impact the Family Spending in the UK: April 2018 to March 2019 release and datasets.
The biggest impact was on expenditure on transport (6% increase), specifically on loans or hire purchase of vehicles. To a lesser degree income (decrease of 2%) was also affected.
The overall impact is that average weekly household expenditure in the UK was underestimated by about 1%, while the interpretation of the statistics remained the same.
The errors were caused by a small number of questionnaire changes made in April 2018 not being reflected correctly in the LCF downstream processing system. The release and datasets have now been corrected. We apologise for any inconvenience. Please contact Carla Kidd at wealth.and.assets.survey@ons.gov.uk for more information.
