Household Costs Indices for UK household groups: January to March 2025
May 29, 2025
Household Costs Indices, 12-month growth rates, expenditure shares and contributions for UK household groups and all-households. These are official statistics in development.
Main points
- Overall UK household costs, as measured by the Household Costs Index (HCI), rose by 2.6% in the year to March 2025; this is a fall from 2.9% in the year to December 2024.
- The all-households inflation rate has followed the sixth income decile most closely over the past 12 months; costs for these households rose 2.5% in the year to March 2025, compared with rises of 2.7% for high-income households (decile 9) and 2.5% for low-income households (decile 2).
- By tenure type, private renter households had the highest annual inflation rate of 3.6% in March 2025, reflecting rising private rental payments; this was followed by social and other renter households, which had a 3.0% inflation rate in the year to March 2025.
- Outright owner occupiers experienced the lowest annual inflation rate of all tenure types, at 1.8% in the year to March 2025; mortgagor households had the next lowest (2.8%).
- Non-retired households continued to experience a higher annual rate of inflation (2.8%) in March 2025 than retired households (2.1%).
- The annual inflation rate for households with children fell from 3.1% in December 2024 to 2.8% in March 2025; for households without children, it declined from 2.8% to 2.6% over the same period.
Angharad Trueman, ARLA Propertymark President, comments:
“With private rents seeing their highest annual inflation rate in March 2025, it remains more vital than ever the UK Government and the devolved administrations take a wide angle view regarding taxes impacting the private rental sector and look at ways to encourage and support new investment for the long term. Currently such factors are sadly contributing towards driving up costs and reducing the supply in some areas for rental properties.”
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