I know, I know. You’ve been on the edge of your seat. The July update is here and I’m pleased to report some genuinely good news for once.
The basket has dropped from £20.67 in June to £20.39 in July, a reduction of 28p in a month. And when you look back to where we started in May at £20.70, we’re actually 31p cheaper now than when we launched. Progress.
What moved this month?
Two items came down in July.
Unleaded petrol dropped 5%, from £1.59 per litre down to £1.51. That’s a meaningful move at the forecourt, particularly for anyone doing a regular commute or a long run. Global oil prices have eased a little and that’s feeding through to UK pump prices.
The Happy Hen free range eggs dropped 7.8%, from £2.55 back down to £2.35. And here’s the thing about that. If you cast your mind back to June, the eggs went up 20p in a single month. Now they’ve come straight back down to exactly where they were in May. So we’ve had a spike and a correction in the space of two months. Whether that was a temporary supply issue or just a pricing adjustment, I genuinely don’t know. But it’s a good reminder that month-on-month changes don’t always tell the whole story.
The good news on everything else
The Big Mac is still £5.19. The Grande Latte is still £4.65. The loaf of bread is still £0.74, the Coca-Cola can is £1.55, the Guinness is £1.41, the cucumber is £0.99, milk is holding at £0.90 and the Twix is £1.10. None of them moved. After a month where three items went up in June, seeing eight items hold their price feels like a small win worth acknowledging.
Three months in
We’re still very early days with this tracker. Three months of data doesn’t give you a trend, it gives you a starting point. But the direction of travel so far is mildly encouraging. The basket peaked in June and has now come back down. Whether that continues into August or reverses again is the whole point of keeping track.
Head over to The Sensible Basket to see the full breakdown and the chart building up month by month. Check back in August when we’ll see what summer does to prices.
My guess? The eggs will do something unexpected again.