How the figures are collected

When figures update

The Office for National Statistics usually publishes public sector finances in the third or fourth week of each month. This site checks for that release each morning around 07:05 UK time in that window, and checks every source once a day around 07:30 UK time. The September 2026 release was published on 21 October 2026. The series file names 20 November 2026 as the next release.

How files are checked

Each source is handled separately. GOV.UK workbooks are found through the GOV.UK Content and Search APIs, on official or national statistics pages under /government/statistics/, so the file address is not stored in the site. A file is published only if it parses, the periods and values sit in the ranges seen in the published series, and it keeps at least four fifths of the previous row count. HMRC's annual tax lines are also checked against the published total. If a check fails, the previous file stays on the pages and the failure is listed on Data health.

Signs and totals

In the ONS time series download, public sector net borrowing (J5II) and the current budget deficit (JW2T) are negative in months, quarters and calendar years when the public sector finances bulletin reports borrowing or a deficit. For September 2026 the download is −24,520 for J5II and −15,770 for JW2T, in £ million. The bulletin published on 21 October 2026 reports borrowing of £24.5 billion and a current budget deficit of £15.8 billion for that month. This site stores the download and shows the negation of those two series, so a positive figure matches the bulletin. Receipts, total managed expenditure, debt and central government net interest payable are shown with the sign in the download.

A financial-year total adds the published monthly values from April. A missing month is left out. It is not treated as zero. On the receipts chart, lines HMRC describes as included in another tax, and the National Insurance splits, are left out so they are not counted twice.

Revisions

ONS public sector finances are estimates and are revised in later releases. This site shows the latest published figures, so a month's value can change. The ONS marks the latest debt month as provisional in its bulletin.

Nominal figures

Money figures on this site are nominal: pounds at the time, not adjusted for inflation. PESA also publishes real-terms columns. Those columns are not shown. Definitions of the measures, including total managed expenditure, debt excluding the Bank of England, and central government net interest payable, are in the glossary.

Prices and history

The public sector finances series are stored at every frequency ONS publishes. In the September 2026 file, J5II runs from the 1946 calendar year and the 1946 Q1 quarter, and the monthly series runs from January 1993. Other series start later, where ONS starts them. HMRC's workbook has annual receipts from 2006-07 and months from April 2017. PESA table 4.2 has financial years from 2003-04. Table 6.1 has outturn from 2021-22 and plans to 2028-29.

Real terms on the money charts use the GDP deflator at market prices. HM Treasury's September 2026 GDP deflators release says calendar years are taken from ONS series MNF2 and financial years from ONS series L8GG. A financial year here is the average of the four L8GG quarters from Q2 to the following Q1. A month uses the L8GG quarter that contains it. The base year defaults to 2025, the latest calendar year with a MNF2 observation and a complete L8GG year. A share of GDP uses non-seasonally adjusted money GDP, ONS series BKTL. A financial-year total of BKTL is the sum of those same four quarters. A single month is not shown as a share of GDP. CPI (D7BT), CPIH (L522) and RPI (CHAW) are used on the old-money page. RPI is for index-linked gilts, not for spending.

What this site does not estimate

There is no forecast until the OBR's public finances data has been read. Gilt totals are shown as the DMO publishes them; the DMO does not state a unit, so they are not rescaled. A breakdown of gilts by maturity is not available yet. Departmental plans are the plan columns in PESA table 6.1. They are not OBR forecasts. HMRC's 2026-27 income tax payer counts are HMRC's projection, based on the 2023-24 Survey of Personal Incomes and the OBR's March 2026 Economic and fiscal outlook.

Licence

Figures this site calculates, such as totals, shares and borrowing shown as a positive number, are available under CC BY 4.0. The underlying statistics keep the publisher's licence: the Open Government Licence v3.0 for the ONS, HMRC, HM Treasury and the OBR, and the Bank of England and Debt Management Office terms for their own figures. Credit the original publisher, and this site if you use a derived figure. Sources and licences.