PolicyEngine Macro
PUBLIC-SECTOR NET BORROWING
£1.8bn borrowed
stored as -1,800.0 · £m, current prices, not seasonally adjusted
- Observation
- 2026-07
- Vintage
- 2026-08-26
- Source
- ONS · J5II
UK topic · borrowing and debt
How much is being borrowed, and what can a model add?
Net borrowing is stored as -1,800.0 (£m, a negative balance) for 2026-07 and debt is 94.1% of GDP; the OBR emulator runs scenarios, not a forecast.
01 — where it stands
The numbers, as the snapshot stores them.
PUBLIC-SECTOR NET DEBT
94.1%
stored as 94.1 · percent of GDP, not seasonally adjusted
- Observation
- 2026-07
- Vintage
- 2026-08-26
- Source
- ONS · HF6X
The ONS records J5II as a negative financial balance, and that is the number shown above: a stored value of -1,800.0 (£m, current prices, not seasonally adjusted) means £1.8bn was borrowed in 2026-07. The sign is the publisher's convention, kept rather than silently flipped.
How those readings have moved, derived from the same stored observations rather than typed in: Public-sector net borrowing +£0.7bn on the amount borrowed against a year earlier (2025-07); Public-sector net debt -0.5pp against the prior month (2026-06).
02 — what the models see
The model view, and the same breath its limits.
The OBR emulator — the OBR macroeconometric emulator — is the model closest to this topic, and the first thing to say about it is what it is not. Its question types in the registry are economic_shock, translated_policy_scenario: forecast is not among them. It answers "what would this shock do to the March 2026 EFO baseline", never "what will borrowing be".
- Outputs: gdp, consumption, investment. Neither number above is one of them.
- It cannot answer arbitrary statutory reform incidence and borrowing through the current adapter. The second of those is decisive here: the emulator cannot report borrowing at all.
- Status: validated for selected scenarios. Uncertainty: not comprehensive.
- Baseline: March 2026 EFO baseline, so every scenario is a deviation from that vintage, not from today's outturn.
Predictive validation: weak. Free-running GDP and consumption MAPE are 4.48% and 7.49%; the anchored fit is by construction. Policy counterfactuals: weak. One income-tax costing is independently compared with HMRC; trade, labour, prices and parts of household income remain constrained. Read the validation page →
So the borrowing and debt figures above are outturns with no model path beside them. What the emulator adds is the counterfactual: run a spending or corporation-tax change through it and read the GDP, consumption and investment response — then take the fiscal arithmetic from tax and benefit reform, which is where the costing actually lives.
03 — run it yourself
Every number above is a command away.
A raw shock in model units, and the list of variables that can be shocked. £1,250m per quarter is a £5bn-a-year increase in real government consumption, held for four quarters:
pe-macro variables # shockable OBR variables and their units
pe-macro obr-shock --var CGG --shock 1250 --periods 4 # £5bn/year of government consumptionOver MCP: list_reform_variables and obr_shock. The result carries the per-quarter GDP, consumption and investment deviations — and nothing about borrowing, for the reason stated above. Connect a client →
04 — the data behind it
Source, coverage, and the immutable file.
| Series | Publisher | Coverage | Snapshots | This vintage | Next release |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Public-sector net borrowing | ONS · J5II | 1993-01 – 2026-07 | 2 | 2026-08-26.json | 22 September 2026 |
| Public-sector net debt | ONS · HF6X | 1993-03 – 2026-07 | 2 | 2026-08-26.json | 22 September 2026 |
Public-sector finance series are revised heavily and often; the snapshot column is the difference between a reproducible number and a moving one.
The snapshot files are append-only and never edited, so a number published here can be reproduced against the data as it stood — browse the store, its release calendar, and the as-of recipe →