Government · UK · Office for National Statistics
UK input costs hit 3-year high for 40% of businesses
ONS BICS Wave 156 shows 40% of UK businesses faced input price rises in April 2026, the strongest share since December 2022, with energy costs and economic uncertainty still dominating B2B planning.
Source published Summarised
Key findings at a glance
- 40% Trading UK businesses reporting input price rises in April 2026, the highest share since December 2022.
- 50% Businesses with 10 to 49 employees reporting input price rises, versus 29% for firms with 250 or more staff.
- 62% Accommodation and food service businesses reporting input price rises, the highest of any industry.
- 16% Trading businesses raising their selling prices in April 2026, the highest share since April 2023.
- 20% Trading businesses expecting their selling prices to rise in June 2026, down 7 points from their May expectation.
- 28% Of businesses planning a price rise in June, the share citing energy as the driver.
- 34% Trading businesses naming economic uncertainty as their top turnover challenge in early May 2026.
- 39% Larger UK businesses (10+ staff) naming cost of labour as their most reported turnover challenge.
- 27% Trading businesses reporting that turnover decreased in April 2026, up 4 points from March.
- 60% UK businesses reporting at least some concern about energy prices in May 2026.
- 7% UK businesses that experienced global supply chain disruption in April 2026.
- 47% Of those hit by supply disruption, the share citing the conflict in the Middle East as a reason.
What the report covers
The Business Insights and Conditions Survey (BICS) is the Office for National Statistics' fortnightly read on UK business conditions, covering turnover, prices, workforce, trade and resilience. Wave 156 covered fieldwork from 4 to 17 May 2026 and asked businesses how trading conditions compared with the previous month, what is shaping pricing decisions, and how they expect performance to evolve.
The release covers all trading businesses across the UK, weighted to be representative by size and industry. ONS classes the data as official statistics in development, with confidence intervals published separately. Single-site weighted regional estimates run up to Wave 154 in a sister release.
Wave 156 puts a sharper edge on a story that has been building since the start of 2026. Cost pressure for UK businesses is back at levels not seen since the inflation peak of late 2022. Turnover has softened, energy and labour concerns are still dominant, and pricing intent has cooled but not collapsed.
What this means for UK marketers
For UK B2B and ecommerce marketers, BICS Wave 156 is a campaign-planning document. Three lines should change how briefs read for Q3.
Buyers are back on a budget. With 27% of trading businesses reporting turnover declines in April and 34% citing economic uncertainty as their top challenge, B2B audiences are scrutinising spend in a way they were not 12 months ago. Decks that lead with ROI maths, payback period and case-study revenue uplift will land better than feature-led messaging. If you sell software, services or capital equipment to UK SMEs, expect longer sales cycles and more procurement involvement, particularly in the 10 to 49 employee band where input price rises were most acute at 50%.
Hospitality, retail and wholesale are squeezed hardest. Accommodation and food service activities had the highest share of input price rises (62%) and the most reported turnover challenges. Wholesale and retail saw 36% of businesses report a turnover decline. Marketers selling into these verticals need to lead with cost-saving, efficiency and labour-substitution angles, not growth narratives. A pricing-optimisation tool or labour-scheduling product has more pull than a brand campaign right now.
The price pass-through story is more nuanced than the headline suggests. Although 40% of businesses bought more expensive inputs in April, only 16% put their own prices up, and forward expectations cooled to 20% for June. UK businesses are absorbing margin rather than raising prices, partly because consumers, per the April ONS public opinions release on cost of living, are still squeezed. For ecommerce brands this argues against blanket price rises and in favour of selective premium positioning, bundling and loyalty plays that lift basket value without changing shelf price.
If you run paid acquisition, expect CPCs to soften slightly as smaller advertisers reduce budgets. That is a window: if your funnel converts and your margin can take the front-loaded spend, this is the cheap-traffic moment of the year. We translate this kind of macro signal into media plans through our UK digital marketing services.
How they got the data
BICS is a voluntary fortnightly business survey run by ONS, with Wave 156 in field from 4 to 17 May 2026. Estimates are weighted to be representative of the UK business population by size band and industry, with confidence intervals released alongside the headline figures. Some response options were removed from the published bulletin for presentation, and ONS notes that respondents may not have full oversight of future expectations, so price-expectations data should be read with that caveat.
For the full sampling frame, weighting approach and treatment of non-sampling error, see the BICS Quality and Methodology Information document. Comparisons run against the previous wave, the same month a year earlier, and historic comparators going back to 2022. The May read also sits alongside our recap of the UK CPI April 2026 release for consumer-side inflation context.
Government · UK
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From Office for National Statistics · published 21/05/2026