Price Index of Private Rents user engagement

Between 18 June and 10 September 2025, we engaged with users of our Price Index of Private Rents (PIPR) statistics to better understand how they are used and how well users understand the methodology used to produce the statistics.

We developed the PIPR to overcome known limitations of its previous measure of private rental sector inflation, which was unable to provide estimates of private rent levels, and change that were both comparable over time and available at low levels of geography. It’s vital that the data and statistics we provide best meet the needs of our users, and that we understand both how you use our data and how well it meets your needs.

We published our PIPR user engagement questionnaire as we wanted to hear from you to understand how you use the PIPR. Your feedback will help inform our future publication strategy and, in particular, identify where are any improved explanations, or additional analysis could be provided to better meet your user needs.   

We received 33 external responses from a variety of users. Below is a table that shows a breakdown of the type of respondents who replied to the questionnaire.

Table 1: Respondent count by sector

The users who replied to our questionnaire were in a mix of different roles ranging from researchers and economists through to service providers, analysts and interested members of the public.

The majority of users who responded have made use of the PIPR on a monthly basis, although this also ranges from daily usage through to quarterly or annual use. A small number of users are either irregular or occasional users. The vast majority (95%) of those who responded reported that PIPR meets their needs or somewhat meets their needs. More than half of those who responded agreed that PIPR meets their needs to a sufficient level of detail. However, the PIPR does not meet the needs of one user, and 13 users would prefer more detail to meet their needs, which will be covered later in this response.

There are a wide range of uses for the PIPR. Most obviously, the PIPR is used to understand and track private rental inflation of the rental stock, but also to contribute to wider economic and policy research, such as monitoring trends along with wages and housing allowances. The PIPR supports academic and policy analysis of housing inflation, such as identifying subregional trends, understanding affordability and strategic assessments of housing in the rental sector. More widely, the PIPR is used to support the uprating of rental agreements in line with the market, as a source for tenants to assess fair rental increases and as an informative source of information to contribute to presentations and reports on the private rental market.

The PIPR user engagement questionnaire was used to better understand the positive benefits of the new index along with aspects of the PIPR that some users view in a negative light. The questionnaire also provided an opportunity for users to highlight additional requirements for any further development of the PIPR. This section summarises the main findings, along with an update on work in response to these additional requirements.

Users highlighted many positive aspects of the PIPR:

• The monthly publication of both rates of inflation and rental levels.
• The granularity of rents now at a local authority level alongside regional and national estimates.
• The presentation of the PIPR data was highlighted as being clear and easy to understand. In particular, the visualisations and maps help users understand the latest trends.
• Having a comparable time series supports the understanding of changes in the private rental sector
• Users were impressed by the quality of data.

However, there were a few perceived negative aspects flagged by users. These are presented below with a response from the ONS.

Some users would prefer a longer time series for the new PIPR. Response: The PIPR series starts from January 2015, with historical estimates before this period based on our previous measure, the Index of Private Housing Rental Prices. We are unable to extend the PIPR methodology prior to January 2015 due to issues with, and the availability of source data. This is explained in more detail in section 6 of the PIPR quality and methodolgy information document. The historical series of private rents inflation data is available here: Price Index of Private Rents, UK: historical series.

One user was concerned that national and regional rents may be skewed by high rental prices. Response: the methodology used in the PIPR, in particular the hedonic modelling process, includes an outliering process to reduce this risk (where outliering is a technique that can be used to reduce the influence of atypical values). This is explained in more detail in section 6 of the PIPR quality and methodology information document.

There was a concern regarding the potential overestimation of Scottish rents in the PIPR compared to England and Wales. Response: A comparable methodology is used in the PIPR to calculate rental estimates across each country of the United Kingdom. This methodology uses the available rents data to approximate the stock of rents, regardless of differences in data collection in different parts of the UK. For England and Wales, achieved rents are collected for both new and existing tenancies, while in Northern Ireland, rents data are for newly advertised lets. Scotland rents are predominantly for advertised new lets. The PIPR statistical bulleting and accompanying material contains several caveats to make users aware of this difference in source data and potential impact. Section 10 of the monthly PIPR statistical bulletin provides more detail. In 2023, the National Statistician’s Advisory Technical Panel for Consumer Prices concluded that there was insufficient evidence to justify a change to ONS’ rents methodology and instead recommended that ONS and Scottish Government work to improve Scottish Government’s rents data collection for Scotland to increase comparability across the UK.

One user highlighted a perceived lag in collating and publishing the data, with latest figures being prior to the month of publication. Similarly, another user requested to consider increasing the timeliness of compilation, so the PIPR is available sooner to reflect more recent trends. Response: The compilation and publication of the PIPR is dependent on several data sources and having sufficient time to both compile and quality assure the data. This is typical across almost all statistics. For the PIPR we usually publish within three weeks of the reference period (so August estimates published in mid-September). It would be difficult to make any significant improvements in this timeliness without reducing the quality assurance period. The PIPR is as timely as ONS’ measures of consumer price inflation statistics, which are published on the same date for the same monthly period. We are also aware of a misconception around the rental price data being used in the PIPR and whether this is smoothed using a rolling average. This is not the case, and we have published a recent blog post to better explain this.

It was noted there were difficulties in accessing the PIPR data from the ONS website. Response: ONS is currently transforming the ONS website, improving it with brand new navigation, page designs and content. Users are invited to explore the preview website.

Some users provided details in their questionnaire responses to define what additional requirements they have for the PIPR and wider private rental sector statistics. To summarise:

There were requests for more granular PIPR data, by property type and by size of property. Response: PIPR estimates are currently available by property type (for example, detached house) or bedroom category (for example, 2-bedroom property), but not by property type and bedroom category (for example, 2-bedroom detached house). Uncertainty increases as granularity increases and we have no current plans to publish at increased granularity due to the low counts of rents within such granular categories. ONS will review this possibility if the sample size substantially increases in future.

On a similar theme, some users asked if the PIPR could be extended to a more granular geographical detail (lower than local authority level and at postcode level). Response: It is not possible to publish PIPR estimates at postcode level because of too much volatility in estimates at this level.

Several users requested more detail and transparency regarding the data sources being used in the compilation of the PIPR. In particular, an assessment of how representative each data source used was requested. Response: We updated the PIPR quality and methodology information document and the PIPR quality assurance of administrative data document in March 2025 to provide users with more detailed information on data sources used in the PIPR. We also provided users with more detail on the quality and representativeness of the PIPR in section 3 of our April 2025 PIPR development plan.  

In addition to this, we have engaged with the devolved administrations and from October 2025 successfully obtained permission to publish data collection volumes by month, by property type and by country and English region. Also, the data volumes used in the PIPR regression model by month and by local authority in England and Wales and by Broad Rental Market Area (BRMA) in Scotland and Northern Ireland. These rents data volumes are available here: Price Index of Private Rents, UK: data volumes. This analysis aims to support users' understanding of the quality and representativeness of the monthly dataset used in the PIPR model.

Users have indicated there is additional detail on both rental prices and the wider private rental market they would like to see available. Some of these requests are either not possible or fall outside the immediate scope of the PIPR, but in other cases we have either already implemented improvements or are working towards meeting these requirements.

Several users would like to see upper and lower quartile rental data published. These statistics were previously published via the discontinued Private Rental Market Statistics in England release. Response: The PIPR model estimates price change for the “average” property and so cannot directly be used to produce equivalent price change for upper or lower quartile properties, which are by definition not the central “average” property. We have been working with our methodology experts to develop an alternative method, linked with the PIPR, that would be capable of measuring quartile rent prices. ONS has submitted a proposal to the cross-government Private Rental Sector Subgroup for consideration and will engage with them to determine the scope and priority of further development of this product.

Some users explained there needs to be a clearer explanation of the distinction between achieved rents, as measured by the PIPR and newly advertised rents as measured by private sector indicators. Users would also welcome an easy-to-understand description of the way prices are used in the PIPR. Response: We have made available more accessible explanations of the way rental prices are used in the PIPR through our recent blog post along with explaining the PIPR methods, strengths and limitations, aimed for non-technical user understanding; via our ‘Understanding house and rent price statistics’ webinar . Detailed information about the PIPR methodology was published on 27 October 2025 via our Price Index of Private Rents detailed methodology article.

Users also noted they would welcome more detailed breakdowns of rental inflation in the PIPR, such as by new and existing tenancies or England excluding London. Response: As previously published in our Private rental prices development plan: updated July 2025, we are expanding the PIPR system capability to produce additional aggregation levels (such as for counties and UK excluding London) and will provide users with an update via the monthly PIPR statistical bulletin. We cannot produce a PIPR breakdown by "new" and "existing" tenancies because available rents data do not include the data required, as explained in the "Coherence" subsection of Section 5: Quality characteristics of the PIPR data the Price Index of Private Rents QMI and in our ‘How we measure rental price inflation’ blog.

There were wider requests for analysis of the private rental sector. These included developing affordability measures, understanding the conditions of rental accommodation and how the PRS housing stock is evolving, better links between other statistical data such as house building, population estimates etc and analysis or different rental tenancy lengths. Response: Many of these requests fall outside of the immediate scope of the PIPR. However, the Housing Analysis team at the ONS does publish private rental affordability statistics. In addition to this, the Government Statistical Service Housing Coherence team have recently published an updated article ‘Private Rented Sector Statistics from across the UK, 2025’, which provides a summary of private rented sector statistics from across the UK to assess their comparability and limitations, and improve statistical coherence. Other government departments also publish data on the housing stock, including the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government’s Live tables on dwelling stock (including vacants). 

Methodology

The PIPR user engagement questionnaire asked a specific question regarding users’ understanding of the PIPR methodology and how we can help improve the level of understanding. The vast majority of users who answered said they either had a good or basic level of understanding. Only one user answered that they didn’t understand the PIPR methodology. Some positive comments related to the suite of methodology documents available for the PIPR being well structured and at a good level of detail. The bathtub analogy used to describe the difference between the PIPR stock measure and private sector flow measures was mentioned as being particularly helpful.

There are areas where users felt the PIPR supporting methodology could be improved. These included providing a clearer explanation of the averages being used in the PIPR, providing a simpler explanation of the price data being used and how it is collected, providing more clarity on revisions and making use of more visuals and plain English to aid readability and understanding. Response: we published in-depth information about the PIPR methodology on 27 October 2025 via our Price Index of Private Rents detailed methodology article. We have published more accessible explanations of the way rental prices are used in the PIPR through our recent blog post and by explaining the PIPR methods, strengths and limitations, aimed for non-technical user understanding; via our ‘Understanding house and rent price statistics’ webinar. We also have plans to host a follow-up webinar in early 2026 to provide a more detailed overview of the methodology and data sources used in the PIPR.

Users also asked for more detail on the technical terms used in the PIPR to aid user understanding. Response: We added additional information on the PIPR’s methods in the Price Index of Private Rents QMI in March 2025 to support the understanding of the methodology being used and will aim to add a glossary of terms to this document. In addition, on 27 October 2025 we published in-depth information about the PIPR methodology via our Price Index of Private Rents detailed methodology article.

Finally, some users requested that a consistent methodology should be applied to the calculation of the PIPR for component countries of the UK. Response: The PIPR is calculated using a fully consistent methodology for all countries. The only difference between countries is the underlying rental price data being used. For England and Wales, achieved rents are collected for both new and existing tenancies, while in Northern Ireland, rents data are for newly advertised lets. Scotland rents are predominantly for advertised new lets. The PIPR material contains several caveats to make users aware of this difference in source data and potential impact.

Users may also be interested in our private rental price development plans, published in April 2025 and July 2025, which provide more details on much of the responses provided in this document.