UK Fuel Prices
Today's Statistics
UK Fuel Prices
Summary
If you fill up with £75, a 1p per litre price difference is about 50p.
- Location: Motorways are much more expensive ( +14p )
- Location: Supermarkets are little cheaper ( -3p )
- Region: Northern Ireland is the cheapest region ( -7p ), everywhere else is similar ( within 2p ).
- Brand: The supermarkets are cheaper, but except Shell and BP, not by much
- Brand: Shell and BP are the most expensive ( +4p )
New Price Reporting System
The new fuel station price reporting system went live in Feb 2026. Public fuel stations must join it, so it excludes private ones not open to the public, e.g. at a haulage depot or bus garage.
So far:
| Reporting Prices | 7,200 | (~ 85%) |
|---|---|---|
| Signed up, but not reporting prices | 190 | |
| Yet to sign up | 960 | |
| Estimated Total | 8,350 |
Tax - Fuel Duty and VAT
The formulae for the price of petrol is :
( {net price} + 52.95p {fuel duty} ) plus 20% VAT
⇒ ( {net price} x 1.20 ) + 63.54 p
e.g. if the fuel price is 60p per litre:
( 60p { net price} + 52.95p {fuel duty} ) plus 20% VAT
⇒ ( 60p * 1.20 ) + 63.54 p
⇒ 135.6 p (a tax rate of 156% )
Data Quality and the actual price
The new Government Prices Reporting system is now live. It's still bedding in.
Data quality is a bit suspect in places, but it is early days. For example:
- prices are being reported as 1234, 123.4, or 1.234!
- some stations have addresses, postcodes, and lat/lon coordinates that don't match one another, so it's not obvious where to place the station on the map.
- "Trading name" (e.g. Acme Fuel) is often mixed up with "Brand name" (e.g. Texaco)
It sometimes pays to check the price at the pump is the same as the price on the Big Sign. Even with well known brands, which I assume are franchises. Sometimes, they accidentally forget to update the Big Sign...
The process of marking a fuel station as a 'motorway' one is a guestimate :)
The Road to Hell...
This must be the only industry which has a Government mandated prices reporting law. It's not the same for mobile phones or food!
The problem is, fuel, like electricity, is a distress purchase, i.e. you have to have it no matter the cost.
So, its just possible that fuel stations will use this information to check the prices of their nearby competitors and put the price up to match as you're not going to drive 5 miles to save 2p/litre..., which means the competitors may put their prices up..., which in turn means...
It could be that this will actually cause prices to rise via tacit collusion (conscious parallelism in competition theory) with BP and Shell as the price leaders.
And sooner or later, someone is going to publicise, that at £1.30 a litre, you're paying a crazy 75p in tax, and just 55p for the fuel. The tax rate is way over 100%, and, compared to that, fuel company profits are just a rounding error!