Consumer price inflation UK - January 2025 - Jump 3 percent

19th February 2025

The Consumer Prices Index including owner occupiers' housing costs (CPIH) rose by 3.9% in the 12 months to January 2025, up from 3.5% in December 2024.

On a monthly basis, CPIH was little changed in January 2025, compared with a 0.4% fall in January 2024.
The Consumer Prices Index (CPI) rose by 3.0% in the 12 months to January 2025, up from 2.5% in the 12 months to December 2024.

On a monthly basis, CPI fell by 0.1% in January 2025, compared with a 0.6% fall in January 2024.

The largest upward contribution to the monthly change in both CPIH and CPI annual rates came from transport, and food and non-alcoholic beverages; the largest downward contribution to both came from housing and household services.

Core CPIH (excluding energy, food, alcohol and tobacco) rose by 4.6% in the 12 months to January 2025, up from 4.2% in December 2024; the CPIH goods annual rate rose from 0.7% to 1.0%, while the CPIH services annual rate rose from 5.4% to 5.8%.

Core CPI (excluding energy, food, alcohol and tobacco) rose by 3.7% in the 12 months to January 2025, up from 3.2% in December 2024; the CPI goods annual rate rose from 0.7% to 1.0%, while the CPI services annual rate rose from 4.4% to 5.0%.

Food and non-alcoholic beverages
Food and non-alcoholic beverage prices rose by 3.3% in the year to January 2025, up from 2.0% in December 2024.

Prices for this division rose by 0.9% in January 2025, up from a monthly fall of 0.4% a year ago. The annual rate of 3.3% in January 2025 compares with 7.0% to January 2024.

There were upward contributions to the change in the annual rate of inflation between December 2024 and January 2025 in 7 of the 11 food and non-alcoholic beverages classes. This is because prices rose this year but either fell or rose at a slower rate between the same two months last year. The contributions came from:

meat (0.04 percentage points (pp))

bread and cereals (0.03pp)

fish (0.01pp)

milk, cheese and eggs (0.01pp)

sugar, jam, honey, syrups, chocolate and confectionery (0.01pp)

coffee, tea and cocoa (0.01pp)

mineral waters, soft drinks and juices (0.01pp)

The other four classes were little changed.

Education
The annual inflation rate for education was 7.5% in the year to January 2025, up from 5.0% in December 2024. On a monthly basis, prices rose by 2.4% in January 2025, but did not change a year ago.

The only item that changed price in the education division was private school fees, where prices rose by 12.7% on the month but did not change a year ago. A contributing factor to the rise in private school fees may have been education and boarding services provided by private schools becoming subject to VAT at the standard rate of 20%.

Housing and household services
The annual inflation rate for housing and household services was 5.6% in the year to January 2025, down from 6.0% in December 2024. On a monthly basis, prices rose by 0.5% in January 2025, compared with a rise of 0.9% a year ago.

The 0.4 percentage-point decrease in the annual rate between December 2024 and January 2025 was mainly the result of downward effects from gas (a decrease of 0.07pp) and electricity (a decrease of 0.05pp). Gas prices rose by 1.3% between December 2024 and January 2025 having risen by 6.8% a year ago. Electricity prices rose by 1.2% between December 2024 and January 2025, having risen by 4.0% a year ago.

Owner occupiers' housing (OOH) costs rose by 8.0% in the year to January 2025, the same rate as in December 2024. The latest figure is the joint-highest since February 1992 when the rate was 8.6% in the constructed historical series.

Read the full ONS report HERE