I look into the cost of every day food items at supermarkets has shown that prices may be going up quicker than expected.
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) has taken a basket of “everyday” items, such as bananas, milk, and tea bags, and looked at the price progression over the last year.
It would seem that our groceries have risen by an average 8% over the last year, from June 2014 to June 2015.
Some products sold by superstores have risen even faster, with a kilogram of cheddar cheese reportedly going up by 15%, and a 500g packet of pasta rising by almost 20%.
The technique used to collect this data is based around a computer program which takes a daily snapshot of the 35 items in the ONS basket from different supermarket websites. It collects a supposed 6,500 prices per day.
This is much more reliable than the previous method which only took a reported 6,000 prices per month to compare.
These figures, showing a rise, indicate that the price wars of the big four stores, Tesco, Morrisons, Asda and Sainsburys, may not have been as significant as thought in terms of long term prices.
With the rise going back up, it appears that the price war merely shook things up a bit, without making any long terms changes to the market.
What it has affected, however, is the way that the management of some of the stores is structured and, unfortunately, suppliers of the superstore chains have struggled and even gone out of business because of the demand for cheaper products.
