A year on, the Household Expenditure Survey has closed

Sunday 05 May 2019

More than 1,000 households have completed the Household Expenditure Survey, which is now closed, helping to work out Guernsey's cost of living.

The survey fieldwork ran over a full 12 months to capture the living costs of local households across the seasons. Responses cover more than 2,300 people of all ages, from households in different parishes and tenures and with varying incomes.

Helen Walton, Head of Data & Analysis said: "A massive thank you to everyone that took part and made the survey a success. We’ve had a huge range of responses from super savers to big spenders and everything in between. This reflects the diversity in our population and will give a really rich picture of the variety in spending patterns, which will be used to update the retail price inflation indices and ensure they remain representative.

"The final prize draw will take place on 31 May after we’ve collected the last few spending diaries from households. We’ll contact the winners individually and the winning ticket numbers will be published on gov.gg/hes.

"In the meantime, we’ll continue inputting, coding and analysing the data. So far, we’ve recorded over 80,000 of the individual items purchased by participating households and we are only about half way through. Due to the sheer volume of information, it will take some time to process all of it. We’re aiming to publish the results in the middle of next year and make as much available as possible in open data formats.”

The results of the survey are used to update the Retail Prices Index (RPI) basket. Changes in the RPI are used to inform tax allowances, social security benefit rates, pension payments, wage negotiations, rental price reviews and maintenance payments. See gov.gg/rpi for the latest RPI figures. 

The survey team is still on hand to respond to enquiries by email hes@gov.gg or by phone on 717188. The results of the last survey are published here gov.gg/household.