Housing And Household Services' Overall Contribution To The CPIH 12-month Inflation Rate At Its Highest Since January 2009

13th April 2022

The Office for National Statistics report released today show a huge rising housing services costs.

Figure 4 shows the contribution of owner occupiers' housing costs (OOH) and Council Tax to the Consumer Prices Index including owner occupiers' housing costs (CPIH) 12-month inflation rate in the context of wider housing-related costs. In March 2022, the contribution of housing and household services to the CPIH 12-month inflation rate was 1.49 percentage points, an increase of 0.10 percentage points from February.

The largest upward contribution to change between February and March came from liquid fuels, where prices of kerosene increased by 44.0% on the month, compared with a rise of 2.9% a year ago. This follows changes to gas and electricity prices in October when the Office of Gas and Electricity Markets' (Ofgem's) change to the price cap (introduced on 1 October 2021) came into effect.

OOH's contribution to the CPIH annual inflation rate increased from 0.46 to 0.50 percentage points between February and March 2022, increasing the annual rate by 0.04 percentage points. The contribution to the annual rate from Council Tax remained at 0.13 percentage points, and therefore made no contribution to the change.

The large contribution to the rate from electricity, gas and other fuels of 0.65 percentage points in March 2022 makes this group the largest current contributor within housing and household services.

Read the full report at https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/inflationandpriceindices/bulletins/consumerpriceinflation/march2022