Filling up your Easter basket just got more expensive

Costs are rising across the board. Harry Brennan dives into the detail to see how inflation will hit this weekend

Aleg of lamb, chocolate eggs and hot cross buns – all these Easter staples have surged in price, with soaring costs forcing families to fork out far more this year.

Food prices have climbed 5.9pc over the past 12 months to March, helping to push the headline rate of inflation to 7pc – its highest for 30 years, figures published by the Office for National Statistics this week showed.

Yet the impact on some consumer favourites has been far greater. Lamb is 17pc more expensive than it was last year on average, the ONS said, as shortages in labour, higher fuel and shipping costs and lower grain supplies have been factored into the prices on supermarket shelves.

In individual shops, price increases are even starker. A whole leg of lamb is now as much as £7 more expensive than a year ago, having risen more than 50pc in some stores, according to supermarket tracker trolley.co.uk.

The crunch comes just as families planned to celebrate Easter properly for the first time in three years, after rounds of coronavirus-related restrictions, and as many man households are grappling with bigger energy bills and higher taxes.

Experts Exp warned that rises would only worsen. w Sarah Coles of brokers Hargreaves Hargr Lansdown said: “These price rises r aren’t over yet. The conflict in Ukr Ukraine has pushed up the price of food globally. g But it has also accelerated the rising ris cost of animal feed and fertiliser, which w are feeding through into farm costs. c When you add in the cost of fuel for manufacturing and distribution, it will gradually push up prices on the supermarket su shelves in the coming months.” month

Vegetables Veg are more costly as well, as the price of gas, which is used in the production produ of fertilisers and to heat glasshouses, glassh has rocketed to record highs. A kilo of potatoes is now 3.8pc more expensive, while the price of a bag of frozen peas has increased 4.4pc, according accord to ONS data.

Baked Bak goods like hot cross buns are 5.2pc more expensive on average, the ONS said, s while red wine has increased in price pri by 2.8pc and staples such as butter are up 12pc.

Chocolate Cho has only increased in price by 0.7pc, 0.7p although manufacturers have been able to cut production costs by reducing reduc the size and weight of their products produ without raising prices.

Known Kno as “shrinkflation”, shoppers also a have to contend with this hidden hidde cost. Cadbury, for example, announced annou in March it was reducing the weight we of its Dairy Milk bar by 10pc to 180g, 180 from 200g, while keeping the price the t same. Its large Crunchie and Cream Egg Easter eggs weighed 258g and 254g in 2019 respectively, but both weigh just 236g today, while the cost of both has stayed at £ 6. Rivals have simply upped costs. A Green & Black’s 70pc dark chocolate Easter egg from Ocado now costs £ 6.59, for example, up from £5 this time last year, according to Priceable, another supermarket price tracker.

The cost of filling up the car at the forecourt is now around a third more than it was last year, driving up the cost of travelling to see friends and family over the bank holiday weekend.

It now costs almost £100 to fill up the 55-litre tank of an average family car such as a Ford Focus. The price of diesel now stands at 176.9p per litre, up more than a third in a year, according to the RAC Foundation, the motoring group. Since 2020, diesel prices have risen by 60pc, pushed up by the high price of oil. It now costs almost £90 to fill up the same tank with petrol, up from less than £70 a year ago.

Prices are forecast to keep rising as the war in Ukraine puts further pressure on supplies.

‘Shoppers Shop have to contend cont with ‘shrinkflation’ shri – which masks mas price rises’

EGGS EASTER