Category Archive: Home

The Office for Budget Responsibility established an advisory panel of leading economic and fiscal experts in 2011 to help develop and scrutinise its work programme and methods. Since the establishment of the panel, we have held regular meetings in which we have discussed the content of each of our core publications, as well as the…

Richard Hughes distils the key messages from our latest Economic and fiscal outlook in his press conference presentation and accompanying speaking note.

The economic and fiscal outlook has brightened somewhat since November. The near-term downturn is set to be shallower; medium-term output to be higher; and the budget deficit to be lower. But persistent supply-side challenges remain. Against this backdrop, the Chancellor has spent two-thirds of the improvement in the fiscal outlook on his Budget measures, providing…

Read the executive summary of the March 2023 Economic and fiscal outlook

Richard Hughes, Chair of the OBR, explains the top 5 takeaways from our report.

See how our latest economy and fiscal forecasts compares to all our previous forecasts.

While not a statutory obligation of the OBR, the publication of monthly profiles for the public sector finances consistent with our most recent EFO is something we started doing in May 2020, shortly after presenting our initial Covid reference scenario in the early weeks of the pandemic. Given the extraordinary pressures that the pandemic was…

Over the past 18 months, we have undertaken two separate user surveys to gather feedback on the length, content, and accessibility of our Economic and fiscal outlooks (EFOs). This article reports on the main messages from those surveys and how we plan to respond. December 2021 survey Our first user survey was conducted over December…

January is a big month for tax receipts, with self-assessment (SA) payments due. At £35.1 billion, SA receipts exceeded our November forecast by £5.8 billion (partly reflecting timing effects). Alongside large downward revisions to borrowing in previous months, this has left year-to-date borrowing in the first ten months of 2022-23 £22.0 billion below our forecast…

Candidates for a non-executive member of the OBR are sought to replace Sir Christopher Kelly, whose second term ends on 20 June 2023. This position presents a rare opportunity to play a key role in the governance of the UK’s independent fiscal council, which operates at the heart of the UK Government’s fiscal policy framework….