UK consumer confidence plunges 11 points to -24 in biggest fall since April 2020

British consumer confidence has suffered its sharpest month-on-month fall since early in the Covid-19 pandemic, GfK said, in an unwelcome backdrop for finance minister John Healey’s Budget next week (Reuters).

GfK’s consumer confidence index dropped 11 points to minus 24 in October — its lowest since April and below every forecast in a Reuters poll of economists. September’s reading of minus 13 had been the highest since August 2024. The fall is the biggest since April 2020, just after the first lockdown; excluding the pandemic, the last drop on this scale followed the June 2016 Brexit vote.

GfK said no single factor explained the slump, pointing instead to rising inflation, the conflict in the Middle East and the broader squeeze on household budgets. “The speed of this deterioration is alarming,” said Neil Bellamy, GfK’s consumer insights director. “There has been an extraordinary collapse in consumer confidence,” he added (Alliance News).

The biggest declines came in expectations for the general economy over the next 12 months and the major purchase index — both down 14 points on September — with the latter at its lowest in more than two years. GfK surveyed 2,003 adults between October 1 and 14.

Consumers’ inflation expectations rose to their highest since April, when they reached an almost three-and-a-half-year peak — a reading likely to concern the Bank of England, which is expected to raise interest rates next month.