Stats error meant UK state borrowed less than thought: ONS

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain's government borrowed less during the COVID-19 pandemic than first estimated because of an error made by the Office for National Statistics, it said on Tuesday.

Public sector borrowing, excluding state-owned banks, was overstated by 4.6 billion pounds in the 2020/21 financial year that ended in March, the ONS said. The new estimate is 320.5 billion pounds.

Borrowing so far in the current 2021/22 financial year to August was overstated by 2.5 billion pounds, bringing the year-to-date total to 91.3 billion pounds, the ONS said.

"This error was the result of provisional data for the Public Sector Funded Pension Schemes being used in the estimation of the published dataset," the ONS said.

(Reporting by Andy Bruce, Editing by Paul Sandle)