The Office for National Statistics survey that revealed increasing costs of online pet food has been suspended because of issues with the way the data was collected.
The ‘high demand basket’ (HDB) was a look at the cost of buying essential items online following the coronavirus lockdown announced on March 23.
One item that appeared to increase consistently week-on-week was pet food, leading to concern about profiteering from some.
However the HDB survey did not appear with the fourth version of ‘Coronavirus, the UK economy and society: faster indicators’ report, which is released weekly by the ONS.
Instead there was an explanation that, due to the way automated web-scrapers collected prices from one particular high-street retailer, the new, ‘experimental’ price indices: “have been overstating online price changes for some categories of high-demand products.”
The statement added: “We are temporarily suspending publication of these figures to give us time to improve price collection from this retailer. We will correct these indices and resume publication of these data as soon as possible.”
CONCERNS
The Pet Food Manufacturers Association had already raised concerns about the way the data was collected, saying it refuted some of the methodology.
Nicole Paley of the PFMA said previously: “The supermarkets have been clear that they have been reducing the number of promotions on offer in store (and therefore online) to try to suppress demand and ease the workload on staff so that they can prioritise store hours to restocking vital categories.”
She added that the PFMA’s own analyst had taken a look at price data and found that the simple act of removing such promotions could account for increases noted in the ONS reports.
