UK business investment grew by 1.8% in the second quarter of 2026, revised up from 1.7% in the provisional estimate, while the wider measure of investment across the economy was revised down to 0.9% from 1.2%.

The Office for National Statistics published both sets of revised estimates on 30 September 2026. Business investment for April to June is now 5.2% above the level of the same quarter a year earlier, and whole economy investment is 3.1% higher.

What the revised figures show

Business investment rose by 1.8% in Quarter 2 (April to June) 2026, and whole economy investment rose by 0.9% in the same quarter.

Both figures are consistent with the UK National Accounts, the Blue Book 2026, which the ONS will publish on 30 October 2026. Business investment estimates in this release carry revisions from 1997 onwards. Headline whole economy investment estimates up to and including 2024 are unrevised from the changes the ONS announced in advance.

How investment fits the quarter

Investment is one component of the wider growth picture. The same day's GDP quarterly national accounts put quarterly growth at 0.5% for April to June 2026, revised up from 0.4%, and they report the same figures for business investment and whole economy investment as the investment bulletin.

Within gross capital formation, chained volume inventories fell by £3.4 billion in the quarter once alignment adjustments are excluded, mainly because of a reduction in manufacturing inventories. GDP for 2025 as a whole is estimated to have grown by 1.2%, revised down by 0.1 percentage points.

Which assets moved, and which moved the other way

The largest contributor to the rise in business investment was other buildings and structures. Information and communications technology equipment and other machinery and equipment, and intellectual property products, added smaller positive contributions. Transport subtracted from the total.

Whole economy investment followed a similar pattern without matching it. ICT equipment and other machinery and equipment, dwellings, and other buildings and structures and transfer costs contributed most to the increase, and transport fell here too.

An abstract building, machinery and an intellectual-property symbol sit under upward arrows; a separate transport vehicle sits under a downward arrow.
Qualitative schematic of the ONS contribution story: other buildings and structures led the increase; ICT/machinery and intellectual-property products also contributed positively, while transport offset some growth. Position and size are illustrative, not proportional.

Why the wider number fell short of the first estimate

The revision to whole economy investment came mainly from central government. Government investment decreased by 2.9% in Quarter 2 2026, revised down from a provisional increase of 1.3%, and the fall was concentrated in other buildings and structures and in intellectual property products, partly offset by higher spending on ICT equipment and other machinery.

At the level of the whole economy total, the ONS attributes the downward revision mainly to lower estimates of central government investment in other buildings and structures, other machinery and equipment, weapons systems, and research and development. An upward revision to central government software partly offset those falls. Most of the government revisions came from updates to the Online System for Central Accounting and Reporting, or OSCAR, which collects government spending data.

How large these revisions usually are

Revisions are routine in these estimates, and the ONS publishes their typical size. Between Quarter 1 2025 and Quarter 2 2026, business investment was revised by 0.6 percentage points on average each quarter. The largest revision in that period came in Quarter 1 2026, at 2.1%, as intellectual property products added to growth.

The direction of travel has a mechanical explanation. Large capital expenditure tends to be reported later than smaller spending, so it often misses the provisional estimate and lands in the revised one. From Quarter 3 2013 the ONS has applied a bias adjustment at the provisional stage to allow for that pattern, and in this release it removed the £2.6 billion adjustment applied earlier.

Survey response is the other factor. The Quarterly Acquisitions and Disposals of Capital Assets Survey, the largest single data source for these numbers, had a response rate of 78.1% for the estimates used in this revised release. Since Quarter 1 2022 the average response rate has been 63.0% at the provisional release and 77.5% at the revised release.

The G7 comparison that did not move

Using data collated by the OECD, the ONS compares whole economy investment across the Group of 7. UK whole economy investment was 19.0% of GDP in Quarter 2 2026, which the bulletin describes as the lowest among G7 nations. The non-UK current price data were taken from the OECD on 22 September 2026 and include provisional figures, so the comparison can shift as other countries publish.

What happens on 30 October, and what changes

The annual Blue Book process explains how deep the revisions in this release go. For Blue Book 2026 the ONS updated how it estimates transfer costs on non-financial assets, incorporated revised earnings data into own-account software estimates, improved its sources for artistic originals, refined how research and development is allocated across industries, and brought in revised Annual Business Survey benchmarks for 2023 and new data for 2024. It also reviewed its seasonal adjustment models.

One component stays open. Business Enterprise Research and Development survey data are available only up to 2024, so research and development estimates will keep being revised until more recent survey data arrive.

Looking further back, between 2021 and 2025 the largest absolute revision to annual whole economy investment was in 2024, and the largest absolute revision to annual business investment was in 2023.

How to read the 1.8%

The next business investment release is scheduled for 12 November 2026, so the April to June figure can move again.

These are chained volume measures, which means the effect of price changes is removed and the growth rates describe volumes rather than cash. The bulletin also publishes asset and industry breakdowns and revisions triangles in accompanying datasets.