Flagship scheme littered with anomalies as ministers urge drivers to search for cheapest pump prices
The government’s Fuel Finder data service which contains pump price information for thousands of petrol filling stations (PFSs) across the UK has significant errors, RAC Foundation analysis suggests.
PFSs are required by law to provide details of changes to their prices within 30 minutes of making them. This data is then made available to third party organisations, including those that develop apps and websites to allow drivers to find the cheapest fuel prices in their area.
These developers include the RAC and Petrolprices.com.
As of November 2024 there were 8,329 PFSs in the UK.
However, analysis of Fuel Finder data for Monday 30 March 2026 showed that only 7,553 were listed.
Of these 23 were shown to be either permanently of temporarily closed, leaving 7,530 open ones.
Of all the open PFSs with latitude and longitude coordinates within the UK landmass, at least 22 had coordinates more than 10 miles and less than 100 miles away as the crow flies from their published postcode, and at least a further 368 of those open stations were more than 100 miles away from their published postcode.
A further 116 had latitude and longitude co-ordinates that put them outside of the UK landmass and in either a river, estuary, or sea, or in another country altogether.
These included a PFS apparently located in Togo and another in the South Atlantic.
There were also several open PFSs with apparent price anomalies including. Nine open stations recorded some of their fuel as priced at below 2p a litre, while three reported their fuel as costing more than £15 a litre.
Of the open stations in the dataset:
One hundred and twenty three open stations had not updated a regular petrol or diesel price since the day the United States started to bomb Iran.
One hundred and ninety eight open stations had not updated a regular petrol or diesel price in the last fortnight.
Steve Gooding, director of the RAC Foundation, said:
“Whilst a batch of erroneous map co-ordinates putting a petrol station closer to the South Pole than Southern England might raise a wry smile, repeated anomalies in Fuel Finder flag an urgent need to address data quality issues or risk them undermining this potentially valuable service.
“For a flagship project like Fuel Finder we’d expect the designers to be at the top of their digital game – but the presence of errors that could fatally undermine confidence in the data suggest the system is missing some simple, pretty standard sense-checks that stops mistakes like these making their way into the system in the first place.
“For Fuel Finder to succeed as the trusted source of fuel price data that will be picked up and incorporated into motorists’ websites, apps and satnavs it needs need to be rock solid, why else would developers risk their reputations by adopting it?
“Fuel Finder has arrived at a moment when motorists and ministers are all laser-focused on pump prices, it might happily turn out to be just the right service at the right time, but only if it can be guaranteed to produce the right data.”
ENDS
Contacts:
Philip Gomm – Head of External Communications – RAC Foundation
[email protected] | 07711 776448
Notes to editors:
The RAC Foundation is a transport policy and research organisation which explores the economic, mobility, safety and environmental issues relating to roads and their users.
It is a registered charity. Charity number: 1002705.
The Foundation publishes independent and authoritative research with which it promotes informed debate and advocates policy in the interest of the responsible motorist. For more information visit www.racfoundation.org