Alcohol-free beer, pet grooming and dashboard cameras are among the goods and services added to the list that’s used to calculate inflation.
The Office for National Statistics collects the costs of 760 products and services to work out its monthly inflation figures through the Consumer Prices Index.
The items are reviewed annually to check they are still representative of consumer spending. For the latest review, 27 have been added and 19 have been removed.
Among the new additions is non-alcoholic beer which ONS said is because “sales have increased over recent years, as has the product range and shelf-space devoted to the product”.
Pet grooming has been included because it attracts the second-highest spend in the pet care sector behind health checks, and dashboard cameras are now part of the index following increases in spending over recent years, including around £150 million in 2023, as consumers look to lower insurance costs and provide parking security.
Motorhomes have been added alongside the existing caravan price collection because research indicates that motorhomes attract a “significant share and expenditure”. In the list of food items, houmous has been introduced.
Among the items removed are premium bottled lager because “other alcohol items are sufficiently representative of price movements”, sheets of wrapping paper have been replaced by rolls of wrapping paper and the two categories of New World and European white wines have been merged into one item covering off-sales of white wine.
From the February 2026 index, published on 25 March, ONS will introduce groceries scanner data in the consumer price inflation statistics.
It said the benefits to using scanner data include improved product and geographical coverage, improved ability to capture price variation within a month, inclusion of more discount types, and more granular expenditure information.
Stephen Burgess, ONS deputy director for prices, said:
“Our basket of goods update sees some fascinating changes every year, offering valuable insight into consumers’ latest shopping habits.
“This year, healthier lifestyle choices influence consumer spending, reflected by goods such as houmous and non-alcoholic beer, while motorhomes wheel into the basket, and increased demand for pet grooming is reflected.
“All this comes on top of the imminent introduction of supermarket scanner data – a step change in our long-term improvement of UK economic statistics – which will cover over half the market, reducing the need to rely on a fixed basket of groceries.”