Six in Ten UK Businesses Still Worried About Energy and Fuel Costs

ONS figures from late August 2026 show 59 per cent of UK businesses concerned about energy prices and 63 per cent worried about fuel price increases, with both measures broadly unchanged from earlier that month.

Six in ten UK businesses are still worried about energy and fuel costs, according to figures published by the Office for National Statistics on 3 September 2026. The ONS Business Insights and Conditions Survey found that 59 per cent of businesses expressed some degree of concern over energy prices in late August 2026, while 63 per cent reported concern about fuel price increases — and both figures were broadly stable compared with early August, when 61 per cent had flagged energy prices as a worry.

The figures show no rapid deterioration over the fortnight, but they do confirm that cost pressure remains deeply embedded across the UK business base. That matters for Kent in particular — the county’s economy leans heavily on sectors that burn through fuel: logistics firms serving the Port of Dover and the Channel Tunnel, agricultural operations across the county, construction businesses, and hospitality and tourism operators. For those firms, concern about fuel and energy isn’t abstract; it feeds directly into operating costs, delivery pricing, and decisions about staffing and investment.

The June 2026 wave of the same survey found that 27 per cent of businesses were actively considering raising prices because of energy costs — up 11 percentage points compared with July 2025. That’s the clearest sign yet that sustained concern is translating into real pressure on what customers pay.

The 59 per cent and 63 per cent figures combine businesses that were either “very concerned” or “somewhat concerned” in response to the ONS survey questions. The BICS excludes some sectors, including finance and public administration, so the results don’t cover every corner of the economy — but ONS weights the data to be broadly representative of the businesses it does cover. Scotland’s equivalent survey for a similar period recorded even higher concern: 76.4 per cent of Scottish businesses were very or somewhat worried about energy prices, and 73.5 per cent about fuel price increases.

No county-level breakdown for Kent exists in the published ONS data. But the British Chambers of Commerce has consistently flagged energy and fuel costs as major ongoing pressures, and has argued that the scaling back of government energy support schemes — including the Energy Bill Relief Scheme and the Energy Bills Discount Scheme — has left many firms more exposed than before. For Kent households, the knock-on risk is straightforward: businesses under sustained cost pressure tend to pass some of that pressure on.