22nd May 2026
April 2026 opened the new financial year with a jolt, exposing the scale of the UK’s fiscal pressures and setting several records that underline how fragile the public finances have become.
Borrowing hit £24.3 billion, the second‑highest April figure on record, exceeded only by the pandemic year of 2020.
It was also £4.9 billion higher than April 2025 and £3.4 billion above the Office for Budget Responsibility’s forecast, signalling that the government is already off‑track before the year has properly begun.
This early overshoot matters: April is usually a relatively calm month for the public finances, yet this year it has arrived with the force of a warning shot.
The most striking record in the report is the cost of servicing the national debt. Central government debt interest in April reached £10.3 billion — the highest April figure ever recorded. The ONS attributes this to the inflation‑linked “capital uplift” on index‑linked gilts, which added £2.9 billion to the month’s interest bill alone. Even a modest rise in the Retail Prices Index was enough to push debt servicing costs to levels not seen outside crisis periods. This single line item now rivals major government departments in scale, and it is eating into fiscal space long before winter pressures arrive.
Public sector net debt also continues to climb. At 94.2% of GDP, it remains at levels last seen in the early 1960s. While not a record in itself, the persistence of debt at this height — and its upward drift — shows how little room the government has to manoeuvre. The ONS notes that this ratio is now 0.5 percentage points higher than a year ago, despite the economy returning to growth. The UK is effectively carrying a wartime‑era debt burden into a period of rising costs and slowing revenue growth.
The current budget deficit — the measure of how much the government must borrow simply to fund day‑to‑day services — also widened sharply. At £17.4 billion, it was 24.6% higher than April 2025 and well above the OBR’s expectations. This reflects a combination of inflation‑linked benefit increases, higher departmental running costs, and the relentless rise in debt interest. Even though tax receipts grew modestly, they were not enough to offset the surge in spending.
Looking beyond the single month, the ONS also revised down borrowing for the financial year ending March 2026 to £129 billion, now confirmed as the sixth‑highest annual borrowing figure since records began in 1947. While this is lower than the previous year, it still represents a fiscal position that remains historically stretched.
The improvement came largely from lower than expected payments to the Bank of England’s Asset Purchase Facility, rather than from structural changes in spending or revenue.
Taken together, the April figures paint a picture of a government entering the new financial year with high borrowing, record April debt interest, and debt levels stuck near 60‑year highs. The ONS is clear that these numbers are provisional and will be revised, but the direction of travel is unmistakable.
The UK is starting 2026‑27 with the public finances already under strain — and with energy price rises, oil‑driven inflation pressures, and slowing consumer demand still to feed through later in the year.
Read the full ONS report 22 April 2026 HERE