Correct as at 3 November 2026.
UK business investment rose 1.8% in April to June, revised up from 1.7%, and is 5.2% above a year earlier, which matters to anyone tracking capital spending and growth.
How much did business investment rise?
By 1.8% in the quarter, and 5.2% on the year.
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said on 30 September that the figure was revised up from a 1.7% provisional increase. Business investment is net capital expenditure by UK businesses on non-financial assets, such as machinery, software and new building work.
The provisional estimate on 13 August put investment 0.8% above the same quarter of 2025, against 5.2% now.
Whole economy investment, which adds public sector spending and is technically called gross fixed capital formation (GFCF), rose 0.9%. That was revised down from 1.2% and leaves it 3.1% above a year earlier.
The drag came from government. Public investment fell 2.9%, revised from a provisional 1.3% rise, mainly because of lower estimates of central government investment.
Which assets drove the increase?
Other buildings and structures led, while transport fell.
Smaller positive contributions came from information and communications technology (ICT) equipment and other machinery and equipment, and from intellectual property products (IPP), which cover items such as research and development and software. Transport, meaning equipment used to move people and objects, subtracted from growth.
For whole economy investment, ICT and other machinery, dwellings, and other buildings and structures and transfer costs contributed most. Transport again partly offset them.
Business investment excludes dwellings and central and local government capital spending. It accounts for over half of GFCF, and has contributed about 10% of GDP on average since 2018 on the expenditure measure.
Why do the estimates keep changing?
Late survey returns and statistical adjustments move them.
The 1.7% to 1.8% revision mainly reflected upward changes for other buildings and structures, partly offset by transport. The ONS said revisions also reflect seasonal adjustment models and balancing adjustments made when the three measures of GDP are reconciled.
Survey timing is a large part of the story. The main source, the Quarterly Acquisitions and Disposals of Capital Assets Survey (QCAS), had a 62.9% response rate for the provisional estimate and 78.1% for the revised one.
Since the first quarter of 2022 the averages are 63.0% and 77.5%.
Large capital spending tends to be reported later than small spending, so early estimates can understate it. The provisional estimate therefore carried a £2.6bn bias adjustment, which the ONS removed from the revised figures.
Between the first quarter of 2025 and the second quarter of 2026, business investment was revised by 0.6 percentage points on average each quarter. The largest revision was a 2.1% increase in the first quarter of 2026, driven by IPP.
The downside for users is that research and development estimates stay open to revision because the underlying survey data run only to 2024.
If you use the figures to judge the investment trend, the ONS recommends chained volume, seasonally adjusted estimates, which strip out price changes and seasonal swings.
The caveat is that these are still estimates: the 1.7% provisional figure for the latest quarter was later revised to 1.8%.
How does the UK compare with the G7?
It is the lowest, at 19.0% of GDP.
Whole economy investment was 19.0% of GDP in the second quarter, the lowest among G7 nations, based on OECD data that included provisional figures for other countries. Business investment itself cannot be compared like-for-like abroad because definitions differ.
The estimates are consistent with Blue Book 2026, the annual national accounts due on 30 October. It lifted the 2024 level of GDP by 0.5% to £2,905bn and put 2024 volume growth at 1.1%, up from 1.0%.
The ONS said the Blue Book changes will be fully reflected in its productivity estimate for July to September and April to June, due on 17 November 2026.
