ONS figures show the growth rate for average automotive fuel prices climbed 3 percentage points week on week and sat 30 percentage points above the same week in 2025, while demand per transaction held steady but remained 11 percentage points down on the year.
Automotive fuel price growth was 30 percentage points higher in the week to 20 September 2026 than in the equivalent week of 2025, according to data published by the Office for National Statistics on 24 September 2026. Week on week, the growth rate rose by 3 percentage points compared with the previous week.
Average fuel demand per transaction told a different story. It was broadly unchanged week on week, the figures show, but down 11 percentage points compared with the same week of 2025 — suggesting motorists are buying at similar levels to last week but considerably less than they were a year ago.
The ONS dataset is classified as official statistics in development and draws on aggregated, anonymised card-spending data alongside Department for Energy Security and Net Zero road-fuel price, sales and stock-level data. The figures measure changes in average prices and estimated demand per transaction rather than total petrol or diesel volumes purchased. The available official material does not identify specific causes for the weekly movements.
The pattern broadly mirrors what the ONS reported for August 2026, when automotive fuel price growth was up 7 percentage points month on month and 27 percentage points year on year, and average quantity demanded per transaction fell 3 percentage points month on month and 11 percentage points year on year.
The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero publishes a separate weekly series of UK average pump prices for unleaded petrol and diesel as accredited official statistics, which provides the underlying price data feeding into the ONS calculations.
Source: @ONS
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