Diesel stays just under £2 a litre as pump prices fall for a second week
Government figures put the average litre of diesel at 199.22p and petrol at 174.07p, both well above the prices drivers were paying a year ago.
The average price of diesel in the UK was 199.22p a litre on Monday, according to weekly government figures published this morning, a fall of only a tenth of a penny on the week before.
Petrol averaged 174.07p, down half a penny. It is the second week in a row that both fuels have come down, after diesel reached 200.04p on 12 October. That was the highest weekly figure the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero has recorded since its series began in 2003, beating the 199.22p peak of July 2022.
The small falls do little to change the picture for drivers. A year ago, on 27 October 2025, petrol was 134.40p and diesel 142.38p.
On those figures, filling a 55-litre tank with petrol now costs about £95.74, roughly £21.80 more than a year ago. The same tank of diesel costs about £109.57, up by around £31.30.
Up by a fifth since the summer
Prices had been coming down earlier in the year. Diesel slipped from 192.14p in mid-April to a low of 164.52p on 13 July, while petrol bottomed out at 149.80p a week earlier.
The climb since then has been steep. Diesel rose in every week from late July to the October peak, adding about 35p a litre in three months, which is a rise of more than a fifth. Petrol went up by around 25p over the same stretch, and even after the last two weekly falls it is still 24.27p a litre dearer than it was at the start of July.
A widening gap
Diesel has pulled further ahead of petrol through the autumn. The gap between the two is now just over 25p a litre. At the end of August it was nearer 22p, with petrol at 161.61p and diesel at 183.49p.
Fuel duty has not changed during this period. The department's figures show it at 52.95p a litre on both fuels throughout 2025 and 2026, with VAT charged at 20% on top.
The weekly figures are an average of prices at forecourts across the UK, so what drivers pay locally can be noticeably higher or lower.
