"It is the duty of the Office to examine and report on the sustainability of the public finances"
16 July 2026
Professor Jonathan Haskel was nominated as the next Chair of the Office for Budget Responsibility by the Chancellor in June. The House of Commons Treasury Committee has now confirmed his appointment, saying ‘We are satisfied that Professor Haskel has the appropriate professional competence and personal independence to carry out his role‘. Find out more on…
9 July 2026
The Chancellor of the Exchequer has today nominated Professor David Miles CBE for reappointment to the Office for Budget Responsibility’s Budget Responsibility Committee (BRC) for a second and final term, subject to the approval of the House of Commons Treasury Committee. As a member of the BRC, Professor David Miles shares executive responsibility for the…
7 July 2026
Our Fiscal risks and sustainability report examine the likely major pressures on the public finances over the next 50 years. Long-term projections are highly uncertain and sensitive to the underpinning assumptions. But almost all our scenarios show public debt eventually moving onto an unsustainable path. Debt moves onto a steep upward trajectory in the 2040s…
We have published a report setting out our response to the November 2025 Economic and fiscal outlook publication error and our progress against the recommendations of the resulting investigations. The report outlines our approach to web publishing, including interim arrangements using both GOV.UK and the OBR’s main website. It also explains the steps we have…
The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) was created in 2010 to provide independent and authoritative analysis of the UK’s public finances. We are seeking to appoint two non-executive members to the OBR’s Oversight Board, one to immediately replace Dame Susan Rice, whose first term ended on 19 June 2026, and one to replace Baroness Hogg…
The Chancellor has nominated Prof. Jonathan Haskel CBE, Professor of Economics at Imperial College London and former Monetary Policy Committee member at the Bank of England, as the next Chair of the Office for Budget Responsibility. If the nomination is approved by the Treasury Committee, he would take up his post later this year. Professor…
The Chancellor of the Exchequer has announced that Baroness Hogg has been re-appointed as a non-executive member of the OBR. Tom Josephs and Professor David Miles said: “We are delighted that Baroness Hogg will be serving for a further year. We would like to record our immense gratitude for the invaluable contribution that Dame Susan…
We have now published our latest long-term assumptions, consistent with the forecast in our March 2026 Economic and fiscal outlook (EFO), below and on the March 2026 EFO page. These economic determinants that underpin our long-term fiscal projections are used by organisations inside and outside government to inform their own long-term modelling.
This morning’s ONS release revised down borrowing estimates for 2025-26 by £3 billion. Borrowing over 2025-26 is now estimated at £129 billion, which is £3.7 billion below our March forecast. Initial estimates for the month of April 2026 suggest that borrowing totalled £24.3 billion. This is £3.4 billion above the monthly profile consistent with our…
Our latest Fiscal risks and sustainability report (FRS) will be published on Tuesday 7 July. It will be launched at the Darlington Economic Campus. The 2026 FRS will update the long-run fiscal projections, focusing on the following components: The economy, where we will examine the implications of updated economic and demographic assumptions, such as productivity growth…
Our 2026 Welfare trends report will be published on Tuesday 23 June. This edition of our biennial report will examine fraud and error in the welfare system.
Our latest Forecast evaluation report (FER) will be published on Tuesday 2 June at 11am. Our FER examines how our forecasts compare to subsequent outturn data and identifies lessons for future forecasts. This report will focus on the performance of our July 2020, March 2023, and March 2024 forecasts for the fiscal year 2024-25 against…
Building on the recommendations of the OBR’s 2025 external review, we are publishing an initial set of our areas of research interest (ARI). These detail the OBR’s priority research questions across four areas: economy forecasting and modelling; fiscal forecasting and modelling; economic and behavioural impacts of policy; and cross-cutting issues. For all engagement with the…
This morning’s ONS release provides an initial estimate for full year 2025-26 public sector net borrowing of £132.0 billion. This is £19.8 billion below the latest full year estimate of borrowing in 2024-25. As the ONS states, this initial estimate should be seen as provisional and is typically revised in future. However, it is currently…
Since the publication of our November 2025 Economic and fiscal outlook (EFO) we have received requests for further detail on a range of policy costings, including changes to capital gains tax relief for qualifying disposals to employee ownership trusts, reforms to the non‑domicile regime, the introduction of a high‑value council tax surcharge, changes to the…
The window in which we took average interest rates and market determinants for incorporation into the final pre-measures economy forecast was the 10 working days to 22 January. This window for interest rates in the final pre-measures fiscal forecast was the 10 working days to 30 January. This EFO will be published on the HM…
The rapid Investigation into November 2025 EFO publication error, published in December 2025, recommended that a deeper examination of recent Economic and fiscal outlook (EFO) events be urgently carried out with expert support. The National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) agreed to carry out this work and its report has been published today: The NCSC report…
Since the publication of our November 2025 Economic and fiscal outlook (EFO) we have received a request for further detail on both our costing of applying national insurance contributions to salary-sacrifice pension contributions, and the fiscal impact of bringing SEND spending into departmental budgets. We have published this new supplementary forecast information below and on…