Diesel price cuts are spreading faster across UK forecourts

On Thursday, I wrote about forecourts where petrol had fallen but diesel had not. The picture has moved quickly since then.

I followed a fixed group of 4,128 currently eligible forecourts through two comparable periods. Among stations whose tracked diesel price had held steady or risen over the previous three days, 15.5% cut it between 29 October and 1 November. Between the close of 4 November and late afternoon on 7 November, 48.3% did. The second window was still shorter than three full days when I checked.

That is 1,326 diesel cuts among 2,744 previously unchanged or rising forecourts in the latest window, compared with 495 among 3,200 in the earlier one. Within the full matched sample, 213 forecourts moved from £2 a litre or more to below £2 after 4 November.

What changed for drivers?

A price you checked earlier this week may already have changed. The diesel cuts in the latest window averaged about 1.9p a litre at the forecourts that cut. That is roughly £1 on a 55-litre fill. Across the whole matched sample, including stations that did not cut, diesel fell by an average of 0.69p a litre.

There is a useful lesson in what did not predict the movement. I tested whether an earlier petrol cut was a reliable sign that the same forecourt would cut diesel next. It was not. The recent diesel cuts appeared across supermarkets, major fuel brands and other forecourts. A petrol price on the sign still tells you little about what has happened to the diesel price beside it.

So if you drive a diesel, check the current price for your fuel and compare nearby forecourts before filling up. That matters particularly if the station you usually use was still charging £2 or more a few days ago.

How I checked

I compared retained price records at the same 4,128 currently active forecourts, using the prices known at the close of 26 October, 29 October, 1 November and 4 November, then the latest prices available at 16:58 GMT on 7 November 2026. Each included station had a valid location and a current standard B7 report dated within 14 days. I checked that the newly observed cuts matched standard B7 prices reported after 4 November.

The percentages describe stations whose tracked diesel price had not fallen in each preceding three-day window. They do not mean that 48.3% of every UK forecourt cut diesel this weekend. The qualifying stations differ between the two windows, although both comparisons draw from the same fixed group.

Fuel Finder's history records price changes and carries the last known price forward between them. It does not fully reconstruct each station's historical status or preserve the exact fuel grade for every older diesel entry; an older entry may include a B10 fallback. The earlier price series is therefore not a fully grade-certified historical B7 series.

The latest government weekly figures describe an earlier period, while Fuel Finder's live Price Pulse shows more recent reported prices. They use different samples from this matched analysis. None of these observations establishes why a retailer changed its price or predicts when another forecourt will follow.

See also my 5 November analysis, which describes its own dated sample.