ONS Updates GDP Methods With New Data Sources and Rental Measures

The ONS posted a video explanation by Craig McLaren setting out this year’s methodological updates to gross domestic product — the headline measure of the UK economy’s size and growth. The figures show that Blue Book revisions for 2023 and 2024 primarily affected GDP estimates from 2020 onwards, after richer annual survey data, improved price adjustments and updated classifications were incorporated. The base year for chained-volume measures has been moved to 2022, replacing the 2019 base used during the pandemic period.

Two changes stand out. Results from the Annual Survey of Goods and Services have been brought in to better measure service sector activity — including manufacturing carried out by service-sector companies — leading to upward revisions to services output across several years. Separately, estimates of actual and imputed housing rentals have been improved by aligning them more closely with private rental statistics and incorporating detailed information on property type, bedroom numbers and floor area.

The ONS measures GDP three ways — output, income and expenditure — and reconciles all three across more than 100 industries using annual Supply and Use Tables to produce a single coherent figure. Other recent changes to the methodology have included improved R&D expenditure data, enhanced healthcare output measures, revised trade deflators for gas exports, and updated public sector classifications.

Revisions of this kind can shift the recorded path of UK growth, including assessments of how deep the pandemic downturn was and how fast the recovery ran.

For Kent, the updates carry indirect weight. The county’s economy leans heavily on services — tourism, professional services, logistics through Dover, retail and public services — meaning national service-sector revisions feed into regional benchmarking used by Kent County Council, the South East Local Enterprise Partnership and district councils. More accurate rental data may also inform housing need assessments used by local planning authorities including Canterbury City Council, Thanet District Council and Maidstone Borough Council. Some economists have cautioned that large revisions to past growth figures can complicate public understanding of long-run trends, though the ONS and government describe the annual updates as a normal part of producing high-quality national statistics.