Energy prices were already high going into May, while food prices rocketed during the month, pushing up inflation.
22 June 2022
Households are continuing to be hit by high energy and fuel prices, new data shows, but the costs of other products, like pizza and quiche, rose more rapidly between April and May.
The cost of filling up a family car with petrol last month was around 30.4% higher than a year ago, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) revealed on Wednesday.
Meanwhile, the cost of using a gas-powered boiler has risen by 95.5%, and the prices of liquid fuel, electricity and diesel have also soared.
But energy prices had already spiked in April and were little changed in May, the figures show.
Bigger changes between the two months can be seen elsewhere.
Potatoes had previously avoided some of the high inflation figures that other food items saw in recent months.
However, in May they started catching up as the rate of inflation for potatoes more than doubled to 5.1%.
Pizza and quiche prices had risen by 3.1% in the year to April; a month later this had increased to 12.3%.
The ONS has a list of goods and services which households across the UK regularly buy. In order to calculate the inflation rate, statisticians measure if the prices
of these items have changed and by how much.
Those products that people spend more on, such as petrol, count more towards the inflation figures than smoked meats, for instance.
The price of binding services and e-book downloads, for example, is not the most important item in most household budgets. But prices in this category increased rapidly last month.
In the year to April binding services and e-books only rose in price by 1.7%; this accelerated to 11.9% in May, although that was largely a blip as previous months had been higher.
More important for many will be the price of olive oil, which surged from being up 9.5% in the year to April to 18% a month later.
The growth in the price of flours and other cereals also soared, nearly doubling from 9.3% to 16.3%.
Ukraine is one of the world’s biggest exporters of grain, and experts were concerned about supplies and prices of wheat-based products after the invasion in February.
Other soaring price rises have included air travel, up from 12.5% in April to 21.8% a month later, as well as pork, eggs and chocolate.
