Methodology improvements will lead to large upward revisions to UK growth estimates

The usual revisions between the second and third estimates centre on revisions to the output components since the previous estimate was made. This time there have been no such changes but there have been major methodological changes which will lead to large upward revisions of recent annual growth. 

The ONS has already published the near-final data up to 2013 which show increases of 0.9% in total since 2007 and an average of 0.5% pa for 2011 to 2013. It seems possible that 2014 could be revised up by a similar magnitude. As regards the quarterly data, we could easily see an upward revision of 0.1%.