Fish and chips has risen more than twice as fast as inflation since 2019

A portion of fish and chips now costs 72% more than in July 2019 — more than double the rise in overall prices, and in the cost of fish itself, official figures show.

Noodle News data desk · reading time ~3 min

+72%

Rise in the price of a takeaway fish and chips portion since July 2019

£11.17

UK average price of fish and chips today

£6.48

UK average price in July 2019, the baseline

The immediate squeeze

Fish just had its worst month for grocery inflation

UK fish prices rose 11.1% in the year to June 2026 — the sharpest increase of any grocery category tracked by consumer group Which?, ahead of energy drinks (+5.5%) and chocolate (+3.8%).⁴ Which? points to supply pressure from the conflict in the Middle East and Russia’s war in Ukraine, which have disrupted the flow of whitefish historically caught by Russian vessels; a 35% tariff has applied to Russian seafood imports since 2022.⁴ Cod supply has tightened further still: UK, EU and Norwegian quota-setters cut this year’s cod catch allowance by 44% over stock concerns, and wholesalers report the price of cod has roughly doubled in the past 18 months.⁶

Exhibit 01

Fish and chips vs. inflation, indexed to July 2019

Source: ONS consumer price indices for fish and for all items;¹² ONS average-price data for takeaway fish and chips, published and reported 2023–2026.³⁶⁷ All three series indexed to July 2019 = 100 so growth rates are directly comparable.

Key finding. Fish and chips has risen 72% since July 2019 — 2.3 times the increase in headline inflation, and 2.3 times the rise in the cost of fish itself.

The bigger picture

The gap didn’t open this year

The pattern holds over the longer run. A portion of fish and chips cost £6.48 in July 2019; by May 2026 the UK average had reached £11.17 — a rise of 72%, more than double the 32% increase in the headline Consumer Prices Index over the same period, and more than double the 32% rise in the ONS’s own index of fresh and chilled fish.¹²³⁶⁷ Because the fish-only index rose at roughly the same pace as inflation generally, the extra squeeze on a fish supper looks to be coming mostly from elsewhere on the plate: potatoes, cooking oil, energy and labour, all cited by chip-shop owners as pressure points.⁶ A separate industry survey published in June 2026 put the current UK average at £11.41 for cod and chips and £10.29 for haddock and chips — a different methodology (shop menus, not the ONS consumer basket) but a broadly consistent picture, with prices now clustered around £10–£11.⁵

What we don’t know

The ONS’s item-level average prices are experimental statistics, built from smaller and less complete samples than the official inflation indices, and designed to capture price change rather than an exact price level — so each figure carries a wider margin than the headline CPI series.³ The four points behind the chart come from separate ONS releases and press reports spanning 2023 to 2026, not one continuous monthly series, so the lines drawn between them are straight interpolations rather than a claim about the path prices actually took in between. Recent-year estimates also vary slightly by source and month: other reporting has put the 2026 average as low as £11.02, against the £11.17 used here.⁶ The specific drivers cited for the current spike — the Russia tariff, tighter cod quotas, energy costs — are industry and trade-body accounts, not independently apportioned by Noodle News.

The strongest objection

Caveat. This comparison sets a finished takeaway meal against a raw-ingredient price index. Fish and chips also carries rent, labour, energy and cooking-oil costs that the CPI fish index does not capture, so part of its extra rise may reflect hospitality-sector cost inflation generally rather than anything specific to fish. A fairer single comparator would be the CPI series for restaurants and takeaway food, which this short piece did not chart.

Method. All three exhibit series are indexed to July 2019 = 100 (value ÷ July 2019 value × 100), computed in Node.js from the raw ONS index points and reported average prices listed under Sources. The fish-and-chips series is a nominal average price, not an index, so its four points are drawn from separate ONS releases and press reports rather than one continuous series — see “What we don’t know”. No projected or modelled figures appear anywhere in this piece; every plotted value is a measured, published figure.

Sources. Numbered, highest tier first; each inline citation points here.

T1Office for National Statistics, “CPI INDEX 01.1.3.1 Fresh or chilled fish, 2015=100” (series L78Y), Consumer price inflation time series (MM23), retrieved 2 Aug 2026.
T1Office for National Statistics, “CPI INDEX 00: ALL ITEMS, 2015=100” (series D7BT), Consumer price inflation time series (MM23), retrieved 2 Aug 2026.
T1Office for National Statistics, “Exploring how the average price of individual items has changed in the last year,” 3 May 2023.
T2Which?, “Food price inflation on the rise: the everyday items going up in price,” 17 Jul 2026.
T2Seafish, with the National Federation of Fish Friers, UK fish and chip shop pricing study, published late Jun 2026.
T3ITV News, “Soaring cost of fish and chips ‘unsustainable’,” 15 May 2026.
T3Restaurant Online, “Fish and chip prices rise by 50% in five years according to ONS figures,” 27 Aug 2024, reporting ONS average-price data.

Corrections. None. Material corrections will be logged here with date.

Figures to 17 Jul 2026. Noodle News · v1.1 · fish-and-chips-inflation.