UK ONS says identifies error in retail prices index

Britain's statistics office said on Thursday it had identified an error in the retail prices index, which is used to calculate government bond payments.

"An error has been identified in the Retail Prices Index (RPI) in 2020, caused by an issue with the 2018 to 2019 Living Costs and Food Survey dataset, which is used to produce the weights underpinning the RPI," the Office for National Statistics said in a statement.

"If the correct weights had been used, the impact on RPI annual growth rates would have been between 0.0 and 0.1 percentage points."

The ONS said it would not revise its data retrospectively, in line with its revisions policy, although the error will be corrected in the February release of inflation data, due on March 24.