The Office for National Statistics published its latest real-time indicators bulletin on 17 September 2026, drawing on data from eight organisations to give a faster read on UK economic and social conditions, with associated datasets — including retail footfall and debit-card spending — released on 24 September 2026.
The dashboard — updated weekly and released at 9.30am — covers a range of indicators including automotive fuel spending, gas prices, potential redundancies, debit-card spending, company incorporations and dissolutions, shipping activity, Energy Performance Certificates and retail footfall. The ONS describes the indicators as official statistics in development, meaning they can be revised and aren’t directly comparable with established headline measures without accounting for differences in definitions and methods.
Data feeding into the dashboard comes from the ONS itself alongside the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, National Gas Transmission, the Insolvency Service, the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, Companies House, Revolut and exactEarth. That’s a notably broad mix of public bodies and private data providers.
The ONS says the programme exists to provide timely evidence before conventional statistics become available — a gap that became apparent during periods of rapid economic change. But the dashboard doesn’t produce a single measure of overall economic growth, and individual indicators can have different publication frequencies depending on data availability.
The main bulletin was published on 17 September 2026, with associated individual datasets — including retail footfall and debit-card spending — highlighted and updated by the ONS on 24 September 2026, with the dashboard running on a weekly cycle. Policymakers, businesses and researchers are among those expected to use it, though the ONS cautions that experimental indicators should be read alongside established official statistics rather than treated as standalone measures. Some indicators cover the whole UK; others cover only Great Britain or England and Wales.
Source: @ONS