UK inflation, measured and applied

Latest 12-month UK CPI inflation: 3.4% (through Mar/2025).

This page measures inflation in the United Kingdom using the Consumer Price Index (CPI), published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) and distributed through FRED. The series runs from January 1955 to March 2025. Figures before 1997 splice the historical retail-price record, so longer comparisons use a continuous price index rather than the modern CPI alone.

Adjusting a pound figure by CPI answers one question: what an amount from a past year is worth in today's prices. £100 from 1970 buys far less than £100 today because consumer prices have risen many times over since then. The pages below convert any pound amount from a chosen year into its equivalent in the latest data, which runs through March 2025.

Over seven decades the compounding is large: prices in the United Kingdom rose more than twentyfold between the mid-1950s and 2025, most of it during the high-inflation years of the 1970s and early 1980s. The individual pages give the exact figure for each amount and starting year, with a year-by-year table showing how the value changed across the period.

UK CPI before 1997 splices the historical retail-price record. Values are in pounds sterling, continuous since the 1971 decimalisation. This tracks consumer-price inflation, not exchange rates or investment returns.

Descriptive, educational content computed from official public data. Not investment advice. Past performance does not guarantee future results.