Key takeaways
- UK inflation in September 2026 was 3.5% on the Consumer Prices Index, up from 3.1% in August. That reading is the input for most benefit rates from April 2027.
- Average total pay grew 3.9% in May to July 2026. Earnings beat prices on the triple lock test, so 3.5% does not set the State Pension this year.
- On 3.5%, the enhanced PIP daily living rate moves from £114.60 to about £118.60 a week, which is roughly £208 over a full year.
- The Universal Credit Act 2025 puts a floor of about £443.22 a month under the single 25-plus standard allowance, from 3.5% CPI plus a legislated 3.1% uplift.
- That floor is built on the 2026/27 figure before last year's 2.3% uplift, not after it. The gap is about £10.18 a month, or £122 a year.
UK inflation in September 2026 was 3.5%, and April 2027 runs on it
Here's the figure for UK inflation in September 2026. The Consumer Prices Index rose by 3.5% in the 12 months to September 2026, up from 3.1% the previous month. The Office for National Statistics published it at 7:00am on 21 October 2026. CPIH, which adds owner occupiers' housing costs, came in at 3.6%. The Retail Prices Index reached 3.9%.
The September reading carries weight the other eleven don't. It's the number that sets what benefit rates are paid from the following April. Section 150 of the Social Security Administration Act 1992 makes the Secretary of State review benefit rates each year to see whether they have "retained their value in relation to the general level of prices obtaining in Great Britain". That phrase leaves the measure open, and September CPI is what the review has used in practice.
In one case it isn't practice but statute. The Universal Credit Act 2025 defines its "relevant CPI percentage" as "the percentage by which the consumer prices index for the September before the start of the tax year is higher than it was for the September before that". For the tax year starting 6 April 2027, that is 3.5% exactly.
What 3.5% does not set is the State Pension. The reason is in the next section.
What 3.5% does to the main weekly payments
The table below takes the confirmed 2026/27 weekly rates from the Department for Work and Pensions and applies 3.5%. The weekly rates checked in DWP's own 2026/27 table all land on a multiple of 5p, so these are rounded the same way. Nothing here is confirmed. The Secretary of State has to lay a draft uprating order before Parliament, and both Houses have to approve it, before any of it is real.
| Payment | 2026/27 a week | On 3.5% from April 2027 | Change a week | Change a year |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| PIP enhanced daily living, and Attendance Allowance higher rate | £114.60 | £118.60 | £4.00 | £208.00 |
| PIP standard daily living, and Attendance Allowance lower rate | £76.70 | £79.40 | £2.70 | £140.40 |
| PIP enhanced mobility | £80.00 | £82.80 | £2.80 | £145.60 |
| PIP standard mobility | £30.30 | £31.35 | £1.05 | £54.60 |
| Carer's Allowance | £86.45 | £89.50 | £3.05 | £158.60 |
The rounding is not cosmetic at these amounts. On PIP standard mobility, 3.5% of £30.30 is £1.06, and the nearest 5p takes it down to £1.05. On PIP standard daily living it goes the other way, from £2.68 up to £2.70. Section 150(5) of the 1992 Act gives the Secretary of State the power to "adjust the amount of the increase so as to round any sum up or down to such extent as he thinks appropriate", which is where that comes from.
The triple lock test, and why prices lost it again
The State Pension is uprated on a different basis. The Government Actuary's Department describes it plainly: "Triple Lock increases are determined as the highest of the annual growth in average May-July earnings (AWE), September prices (CPI) and 2.5%." For April 2027 the three candidates are 3.9%, 3.5% and 2.5%.
The earnings figure comes from the ONS labour market release of September 2026: "Annual growth in total earnings (including bonuses) was 3.9% in May to July 2026, down from 4.2% on the previous three-month period." That previous period is April to June 2026. So earnings win by 0.4 percentage points, and prices lose the test for the second April in a row. In April 2026 the comparison was 4.8% earnings against 3.8% prices.
On 3.9%, the full new State Pension moves from £241.30 to about £250.70 a week, which is roughly £488.80 more over a year. The full basic State Pension goes from £184.90 to about £192.10. Had CPI won, the new State Pension figure would have been about £249.75, a difference of around £0.95 a week. Our piece on the state pension increase in April 2027 works through the pension side in more detail, including what the rate does to a tax position.
The legislative floor underneath that is narrower than the triple lock itself. Section 150A of the 1992 Act only obliges the Secretary of State to track earnings, and only for the basic and new State Pension, Category B, C and D pensions, industrial death benefit, and the Pension Credit standard minimum guarantee. The 2.5% leg is a political commitment, not a statutory one. On earnings, the Pension Credit standard minimum guarantee for a single person moves from £238.00 to about £247.30 a week, and for a couple from £363.25 to about £377.40.
One group inside the pension system gets 3.5% rather than 3.9%. The Government Actuary's report on the April 2026 order recorded that Additional Pensions such as SERPS and S2P, Graduated Retirement Benefit, Protected Payments above the full new rate and deferral increments all move with CPI, not with the triple lock. Anyone whose pension is mostly a protected payment or a SERPS entitlement sees a blended rise closer to the lower number.
Universal Credit does not simply get the September CPI figure
This is where the simple reading breaks. The Universal Credit Act 2025 took the standard allowance out of the ordinary uprating duty for four tax years, including the one starting in April 2027, and replaced it with a three-step calculation. Step 1 picks a base. Step 2 adds the relevant CPI percentage. Step 3 adds a "relevant uplift percentage" that the Act fixes in a table: 2.3% for 2026-27, 3.1% for 2027-28, 4.0% for 2028-29 and 4.8% for 2029-30.
So the 2027-28 standard allowance floor is 3.5% plus 3.1%, compounded. That produces the figures in the third column below. The 2026/27 column is confirmed; the 2027/28 column is the Act's arithmetic run on the confirmed CPI print.
| Standard allowance (monthly) | 2025/26 | 2026/27 | Act floor for 2027/28 | If the uplift had compounded |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Single, under 25 | £316.98 | £338.58 | £351.11 | £361.29 |
| Single, 25 or over | £400.14 | £424.90 | £443.22 | £453.40 |
| Joint claimants, both under 25 | £497.55 | £528.34 | £551.11 | £563.78 |
| Joint claimants, one or both 25 or over | £628.10 | £666.97 | £695.71 | £711.71 |
The last column is not a rival forecast. It's the same formula applied to the rate people are actually paid today, and the gap between the two columns is the point of the next section.
One technical note, because it decides the pennies. The Act doesn't say where to round. Rounding each step to the nearest penny reproduces three of the four published 2026/27 rates exactly, so that is the convention used here. Carrying the unrounded figures through the whole chain instead moves three of the floors down by 1p.
The uplift the Act adds does not carry forward
Read Step 1 again. For 2026-27 it says "take the amounts of the standard allowance for tax year 2025-26". For 2027-28, 2028-29 and 2029-30 it says "take the amounts resulting from Step 2 for the previous tax year". Step 2 is the CPI step. Step 3 is the uplift step. So the base for next year is the figure from before the uplift was added, not the figure that was paid.
Work it through on the single 25-plus rate. The 2025/26 allowance was £400.14 a month. Adding September 2025 CPI of 3.8% gives £415.35, and that is the Step 2 output. Adding the 2.3% uplift gives £424.90, which is the rate in payment now, and it matches DWP's published figure to the penny. For 2027-28, Step 1 goes back to £415.35 rather than £424.90. Add 3.5%, add 3.1%, and the floor is £443.22.
Run the same two percentages on £424.90 instead and you get £453.40. The difference is £10.18 a month, or £122.16 over a year, for a single claimant aged 25 or over. On the joint 25-plus rate the gap is £16.00 a month.
Three of the four 2026/27 standard allowances sit exactly on the Act's minimum, to the penny. The single under-25 rate is the exception, at £338.58 against a floor of £336.60, so it came in £1.98 a month above the statutory requirement. That is worth holding onto, because section 1 only says the amounts must be "at least" the calculated minimum. The floor is a floor. What gets paid in April 2027 can be higher, and in one case out of four last year it was.
The strongest objection to reading the floor as the answer
Anyone who disagrees with the arithmetic above has a good case, and it runs like this. The Act sets a minimum, not a rate. Section 1 says the amounts must be "at least" the calculated figure. DWP went above it on one of the four standard allowances in 2026/27, by £1.98 a month. So quoting £443.22 as the April 2027 number treats a floor as a forecast, and critics of that reading can point out that nothing in the Act stops the Secretary of State setting £453.40 instead.
That objection is right about the law and weaker on the evidence. Three of the four 2026/27 allowances came in on the floor to the penny. The one exception was £1.98 above it, not £10.18. On the only year the Act has actually produced, the floor was the rate in three cases out of four.
A second objection is harder to settle. Nothing published says whether Step 1 reading the Step 2 output was the intended design or a drafting consequence. The words are not ambiguous. Intent is a different question, and if DWP's own rate-setting treats the rate in payment as the base, then the floor calculated here is the wrong model even though it's the right reading of the text.
The health element and the standard allowance trade against each other
There's a second mechanism inside the same Act that most coverage skips. Section 3 disapplies the ordinary uprating duty for the limited capability for work element and the limited capability for work and work-related activity element for the four tax years ending 5 April 2026 to 5 April 2029, a year earlier at each end than the standard allowance's own four-year window. In 2026/27 the LCW amount stayed at £158.76 a month, unchanged from 2025/26.
Section 4 then sets a combined test. For each pairing of the protected LCWRA amount and a standard allowance, the sum of the two has to rise by at least the relevant CPI percentage. In 2026/27 the sum of £400.14 and £423.27 was £823.41. Uprated by 3.8% that is £854.70, and the published pair of £424.90 and £429.80 adds to exactly £854.70.
For April 2027 the same test on 3.5% gives a combined floor of £884.61. If the standard allowance lands on its own floor of £443.22, the protected LCWRA amount only has to reach £441.39. If the standard allowance instead lands at £453.40, the protected amount can fall to £431.21 and section 4 is still satisfied. A larger rise in one component legally permits a smaller rise in the other. For a claimant who receives both, the September CPI figure caps the combined award rather than each part of it.
Not every Universal Credit element works this way. The child amounts took straight CPI in 2026/27, rising from £339.00 to £351.88 for a first child born before 6 April 2017, and from £292.81 to £303.94 for a child born after that date. On 3.5% those become about £364.20 and £314.58.
What the September figure doesn't reach at all
The benefit uprating in April 2027 reaches less than the headline implies, because section 150(2) is less sweeping than it looks. Only the sums listed in section 150(3) must rise by at least the change in prices. For everything else in the review, the Secretary of State increases them "if he considers it appropriate, having regard to the national economic situation and any other matters which he considers relevant", and section 150(2)(c) simply requires the order to state which sums it does not increase.
That discretion shows up in the 2026/27 table. The benefit cap did not move. It stayed at £25,323 a year in Greater London for couples and for single claimants with a child of qualifying age, and £16,967 for single adult households without children, the same as 2025/26. A household at the cap sees no part of the 3.5% reach it, because the cap bites on the total.
The 3.9% RPI print has consequences outside the benefit system. Our guide to how index-linked gilts work sets out that linkers uprate on RPI rather than CPI, and with a three-month lag, so a September print reaches a bondholder later than it reaches a claimant. Anyone comparing inflation protection across asset classes may also want the evidence on the best inflation hedge, where the record depends heavily on which shock you measure.
Five Septembers, from 1.7% to 10.1%
The CPI September 2026 print is one bar in a volatile series. The chart plots the September CPI annual rate for each of the last six years. Each bar is the input to the following April's uprating round. The range is the argument: 3.1% in 2021, 10.1% in 2022, 6.7% in 2023, 1.7% in 2024, 3.8% in 2025 and 3.5% in 2026.
That volatility is why the September date matters more than the level. A claimant's real income depends on which single month of the year the law happens to read. In 2024 the September reading of 1.7% was the lowest of the six, and it set the 2025/26 uprating for the price-linked rates. DWP's own table records the "Statutory minimum increase to Non-State Pensions" as 1.70% for 2025/26 and 3.80% for 2026/27, which is the same pair of September readings seen from the other side.
Underneath the 3.5% headline, the composition is unusual. Motor fuels rose 29.8% over the year, with petrol at 169.5 pence a litre in September 2026, the highest since August 2022. Food and non-alcoholic drink inflation was 1.3%, a rate last lower in September 2021. Core CPI, which strips out energy, food, alcohol and tobacco, was 2.8%. A benefit uprating driven by a fuel spike raises incomes for a year on the strength of a price move that may already have reversed.
Where this arithmetic breaks
Three things could make every projected figure above wrong, and they're worth separating.
The first is discretion. None of the April 2027 rates are confirmed. There is no DWP rates document for 2027 to 2028 at the time of writing, and sections 150(9) and 150A(6) both require a draft order approved by resolution of each House before anything takes effect. The Secretary of State can go above the floors, as happened on the single under-25 standard allowance, and for the sums outside section 150(3) can decline to increase them at all.
The second is that a Budget can change the rule rather than the input. The Universal Credit Act 2025 itself is the example: it removed the standard allowance from the ordinary duty and wrote a different formula in its place. An Act can do that again.
The third is that forecasts of this figure have been poor. The Government Actuary's report published on 13 January 2026 projected average weekly earnings growth of 3.4% and CPI of 2.3% for the April 2027 uprating. The outturn was 3.9% and 3.5%. Both came in above the official projection, and the CPI miss was 1.2 percentage points on a number that sets statutory payments. Those projections also assume 2.5% is the binding leg of the triple lock in April 2028, April 2029 and April 2030, which is a long way from certain on this evidence.
A note on the data itself. CPI is a sample estimate, published with provisional components, and the ONS revises the labour market figures as more returns arrive. The 3.9% earnings print for May to July 2026 has already moved down from 4.2% on the previous three-month period, and the published series is seasonally adjusted. If a revision moved earnings below 3.5%, the triple lock test would flip to prices.
What would change the conclusion
The conclusion here is narrow. UK inflation in September 2026 of 3.5% is the default percentage for April 2027, and the default is weaker than it sounds. Two things would overturn it.
A statutory change at the next fiscal event is the obvious one. The relevant CPI percentage is fixed by the September print, but the uplift table in the Universal Credit Act 2025, the freeze on the health elements and the benefit cap are all rewritable by Parliament. The document that settles it is the uprating order rather than the CPI release, because the order is where the discretion lands and where the sums that go unincreased have to be named.
The second is narrower and more interesting. If a future standard allowance is set above the Act's floor, the non-compounding base in Step 1 means the excess is lost again the following year. On the current reading of the Act, a generous year does not build on itself. Whether DWP treats Step 1 as reading the Step 2 output or the rate actually paid is the single assumption on which the £443.22 figure rests. The first 2027/28 rate table published settles it, and it's the one line worth checking when it appears.