The UK inflation rate was 3.5 percent in April 2025, up from 2.6 percent in the previous month, and the fastest rate of inflation since February 2024. Between September 2022 and March 2023, the UK experienced seven months of double-digit inflation, which peaked at 11.1 percent in October 2022. Due to this long period of high inflation, UK consumer prices have increased by over 20 percent in the last three years. As of the most recent month, prices were rising fastest in the communications sector, at 6.1 percent, but were falling in both the furniture and transport sectors, at -0.3 percent and -0.6 percent respectively.
The Cost of Living Crisis High inflation is one of the main factors behind the ongoing Cost of Living Crisis in the UK, which, despite subsiding somewhat in 2024, is still impacting households going into 2025. In December 2024, for example, 56 percent of UK households reported their cost of living was increasing compared with the previous month, up from 45 percent in July, but far lower than at the height of the crisis in 2022. After global energy prices spiraled that year, the UK's energy price cap increased substantially. The cap, which limits what suppliers can charge consumers, reached 3,549 British pounds per year in October 2022, compared with 1,277 pounds a year earlier. Along with soaring food costs, high-energy bills have hit UK households hard, especially lower income ones that spend more of their earnings on housing costs. As a result of these factors, UK households experienced their biggest fall in living standards in decades in 2022/23. Global inflation crisis causes rapid surge in prices The UK's high inflation, and cost of living crisis in 2022 had its origins in the COVID-19 pandemic. Following the initial waves of the virus, global supply chains struggled to meet the renewed demand for goods and services. Food and energy prices, which were already high, increased further in 2022. Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 brought an end to the era of cheap gas flowing to European markets from Russia. The war also disrupted global food markets, as both Russia and Ukraine are major exporters of cereal crops. As a result of these factors, inflation surged across Europe and in other parts of the world, but typically declined in 2023, and approached more usual levels by 2024.