National Accounts

Historical UK National Accounts 1086 to the present - Academic datasets

The first four datasets here represent estimates of British and UK National accounts data back to 1270 based on academic research and have been made available with the kind permission of the authors, the Faculty of Economics at the University of Cambridge and Cambridge University Press:

• British Economic Growth Dataset 1270-1870 (xls) from Steve Broadberry, Bruce Campbell, Alex Klein, Mark Overton and Bas van Leeuwen, British Economic Growth 1270-1870
• Feinstein (1972) National Income Expenditure and Output of the United Kingdom 1855-1965 (xls). These are the data tables from Professor Charles Feinstein's (1972) volume National Income, Expenditure and Output of the UK 1855-1965 and are also available in pdf. These are reproduced with the kind permission of the Faculty of Economics at the University of Cambridge and Professor Feinstein's family
• The estimates for capital formation, gross and net capital stocks and net trade were subsequently revised by Charles Feinstein in a joint study edited with Sidney Pollard. These data supersede those in the 1972 volume and are available in the spreadsheet Studies in Capital Formation in the United Kingdom 1750-1920 (xls).
• Feinstein's (1972) estimates for the income measure of GDP have also been updated in recent work by Solomos Solomou and Ryland Thomas. This brings together many of the subsequent improvements that Feinstein and other scholars made to wages, employment and other components required to build up GDP from the income side. The estimates are available in the spreadsheet Updated estimates of GDP from the income side, 1842-1920 (xls).
• Sefton and Weale - Balanced National Accounts Estimates 1920-1990 (xls) by James Sefton and Martin Weale, from Reconciliation of National Income and Expenditure. Balanced Estimates of National Income for the United Kingdom, 1920–1990, © Cambridge University Press 1995

The Bank of England's Millennium of Data Spreadsheet combines these and other estimates to create continuous national accounts series up to the present. The Millennium dataset also includes a benchmark estimate for 1086 derived from the Domesday Book based on the work of Professor James Walker at the Henley Business School, University of Reading:

• Bank of England Millennium of Macroeconomic Data v3.1. Headline national accounts series from this dataset are available via FRED

Official Historical National Accounts Data - The pre-ESA95 National Accounts 1948-1997

Historical official national accounts data for the UK between 1948 and 1997, based on the earlier system of accounts preceding the introduction of the ESA95 standard in 1998, has been reconstructed on behalf of the ONS by Anne Harrison, editor of the 2008 System of National Accounts, the international standard on which the ESA is based. This file covers the summary national accounts and the sector accounts as they appeared annually in the Blue Books and on a quarterly basis in Economic Trends and, from 1992, in the United Kingdom Economic Accounts (UKEA). The data throughout are consistent with the last quarterly accounts published before Blue Book 1998 was introduced. So they include data up to 1998Q1 and are consistent with the classifications and definitions in Blue Book 1997. They represent the official national accounts as they were known and understood at that time.

• Fifty Years of UK National Accounts - Blue Book data 1948 to 1997

The international guidelines on the compilation of national accounts were revised in 1993 and were implemented from 1998 onwards. At this time the ONS changed their methodologies to adopt more rigorously the European version of the international guidelines (ESA). The data first produced under the new systems covered a period from 1987 to 1997 and although the initial intention was to back-fill the historical data prior to 1986, resources did not permit doing this for more than a handful of series. This exercise, therefore, is a step towards completing that objective by initially reconstructing the data as they existed prior to 1998 so that a comprehensive linking process can be attempted. A further exercise, linking the data in this file to that in Feinstein's (1972) dataset and the latest set of ONS national accounts from 1987 to the present is underway. That will facilitate a more consistent and coherent set of joined-up accounts for the post-WW2 period than currently is available in the Bank's Millennium dataset. A sibling dataset covers the balance of payments that appeared in the Pink Book at the same point in time and is available in the Overseas Trade and the Balance of Payments section.

Vintage or Real-time databases

Bank of England

The Bank of England's vintage database contains monthly vintages of National Accounts data published since January 1990. Each vintage shows the data available on the last working day of the month. For a subset of the real expenditure variables, a longer history of quarterly vintages is also available.  The database is available in Microsoft Excel format. It is updated every year following the publication of the ONS Blue Book. It was last updated in November 2016. The 'read me' workbook details the available dataset. The data themselves can be found in the other workbooks. They all contain a 'menu' worksheet that lists the data available therein. Other worksheets contain successive vintages of data for individual series. Each vintage is a separate column, with the oldest vintage of data on the far left and the most recent vintage on the far right. At the top of each column is the publication date (i.e. the month in which that vintage was published).

• Read me (xls)
• Nominal expenditure (xlsx)
• Nominal income (xlsx)
• Real expenditure (long-run) (xlsx)
• Real expenditure (xlsx)
• Real output (xlsx)
• Expenditure deflators (xlsx)
• Macroeconomic balances (xlsx)
• Labour market quantities (xlsx)

Measuring Worth

Professor Sam Williamson at the Measuring Worth site has collected vintages of official United Kingdom GDP numbers, published annually since 1953 and quarterly since 1961. This is joint work with Enrico Berkes. The annual vintage dataset consists of 56 spreadsheets, one for each year starting in 1953 and then every year since 1959. They each present nominal GDP, real GDP, population, unemployed, real GDP per capita, nominal GDP per capita, and the implied deflator. Most of the series start in 1948 and go up to the year previous to when they are published.

• Annual dataset
• Quarterly dataset

Feinstein (1972) - National Income, Output and Expenditure of the UK 1855-1965, Sources and Methods

The following chapters from Feinstein's work on National Income over the period 1855-1965 discuss the sources and methods used in the construction of the estimates in the spreadsheet in the datasets section. Permission to reproduce these has kindly been granted by the Faculty of Economics at the University of Cambridge and Professor Feinstein's family.

• Contents
• Chapter 1 - Introduction and Summary Tables
• Chapter 2 - Personal Income and Expenditure
• Chapter 3 - Companies and Public Corporations
• Chapter 4 - Central Government
• Chapter 5 - Local Authorities
• Chapter 6 - International Transactions
• Chapter 7 - Gross Trading Profits and Self Employment Income
• Chapter 8 - Rent
• Chapter 9 - Capital Formation
• Chapter 10 - Real Product
• Chapter 11 - Population and Labour Force
• Tables 1 to 65 (pdf)
• Tables 1 to 65 (xlsx)

Some of Professor Feinstein's (1972) estimates for various components of the National Accounts were updated by him in later work. These are discussed in Feinstein Fulfilled: Updated Estimates of UK GDP 1841-1920 (ESCoE TR-04) by Solomos Solomou and Ryland Thomas.

Official sources and methods guides to the National Accounts

The complete set of volumes covering the sources and methods used in constructing the UK National Accounts since WW2 are available below:

• National Income Statistics Sources and Methods - 1956 (250MB)
• National Accounts Statistics Sources and Methods - Rita Maurice 1968 (330MB)
• The National Accounts - a short guide 1981 Harold Copeman (75MB)
• United Kingdom National Accounts Sources & Methods - 3rd Edition 1985 (208MB)
• ESA95 Sources and Methods for National Accounts 1998
• ESA95 United Kingdom Sector Classification for the National Accounts 1998 (62MB)
• The National Accounts A Short Guide - Pete Lee - 2011

Important changes to the National Accounts since 2011 are documented in a series of methodology articles available on the National Archives. Many of these cover the transition from ESA95 to ESA10.

• ONS National Accounts Methodology Articles 2011-2016

Histories and Summaries of Developments in UK National Accounts

Steve Drew at ONS has compiled a summary document of all Blue Book changes since 1951 which is provided below:

• Blue Book Summaries 1951-2021 by Steve Drew

He has also put together a timeline of UK national accounts developments and Blue Book revision windows:

• National Accounts Timeline
• Blue Book revision windows since BB1948

A history of the preliminary estimate of GDP written by Steve Drew, Sumit Dey-Chowdhury, Craig McLaren and Andrew Walton was also published by ONS in 2022:

• 50 years of the preliminary estimate of GDP

The following titles are available to select in the dropdown menus of this section.

• Annual National Income and Expenditure estimates for the UK ("Blue Books") from 1941
• Quarterly UK Economic Accounts (UKEA) from 1992

Please select a publication title and year from the boxes below to narrow down the list. Alternatively type in a general search term. The available excel and pdf files are shown in the table. If the publication you are looking for is not in this section please see the complete list of downloadable publications. 

Excel files for certain Blue Books have kindly been provided by ONS from archived data in legacy systems. They have been provided on a best endeavours basis to enable users to obtain a series from a particular Blue Book vintage and are organised by series code (CDIDs). These have undergone simple checks against the published Blue Books but they need to be used with care. They contain backdata for many series which did not appear in the published Blue Book which typically would only involve a backrun of around 10 years for most series. Backdata in the files before this point may not have been subject to appropriate checks for methodological or classification discontinuities and accounting constraints. So users should be alert to potential series breaks. Where there is a discrepancy between a series in the excel file and the published Blue Book pdf file, the data in the published Blue Book should be taken to be the correct value. See Martin (2007) for a discussion of identified issues with historic Blue Book datasets after the introduction of ESA95 in 1998 and documentation of series which may contain errors.

For UK Economic Accounts 1998Q1 the consistent set of historical annual and quarterly national accounts data reconstructed by Anne Harrison, based on the pre-ESA95 system of accounts and discussed in the Datasets section, is the linked Excel file for this periodical.

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