Description

The Bank of Eng­land yes­ter­day quietly replaced a data­set linked to one of its most closely watched busi­ness sur­veys, adding to uncer­tainty about the qual­ity of UK eco­nomic fig­ures.

Accord­ing to data pub­lished by the BoE at 9.31am, busi­nesses expec­ted UK infla­tion for the year ahead to be 3.5 per cent, the highest since 2023.

But the BoE then swapped the spread­sheet with the under­ly­ing res­ults of its sur­vey of chief fin­an­cial officers on its web­site.

The updated ver­sion showed the oneyear infla­tion expect­a­tion at 3.4 per cent, the same as the pre­vi­ous month.

“The Bank of Eng­land suc­cumbed to data report­ing prob­lems, chan­ging the pub­lished res­ults of their Decision Maker Panel after the num­bers were pos­ted . . . without issu­ing a cor­rec­tion or explain­ing what happened,” said Robert Wood, eco­nom­ist at con­sultancy Pan­theon Mac­roe­co­nom­ics.