Official data from the Office for National Statistics confirm UK business investment grew for a second consecutive quarter between April and June 2026, rising 1.7 per cent on a volume basis.
The 1.7 per cent quarter-on-quarter rise is the headline figure from the ONS’s provisional business investment bulletin for Q2 2026. The figures also show investment was 0.8 per cent above the same quarter in 2025, marking back-to-back quarterly growth after a period of wider economic uncertainty.
The Confederation of British Industry posted its own reading of the data, framing the result as a beat against market expectations of a contraction — though that claim cannot be confirmed from the ONS release itself and should be treated with caution.
The Q1 2026 growth figure of 0.9 per cent is consistent with ONS business investment data for that quarter, supporting the consecutive-quarter picture. The consecutive-quarter comparison is supported by ONS data for both Q1 and Q2 2026, with the CBI post drawing on the same figures.
For Kent businesses, the national picture matters. The county’s manufacturing, logistics and port-linked sectors are all sensitive to capital spending trends — equipment orders, premises upgrades and supplier contracts tend to follow when firms invest. A sustained national uptick can feed through to local order books, though the ONS figure alone doesn’t confirm conditions are strengthening in Kent specifically.
Business investment measures spending by firms on assets such as machinery, equipment and buildings, and feeds directly into UK GDP calculations. Two consecutive quarters of growth is a notable run, but the ONS has not identified any single policy change as the driver of the Q2 rise.
Source: @CBItweets