Published: 09/05/2024
Each month the Department for Business and Trade publishes construction material price indices, covering All Work, New Housing, Other New Work and Repair and Maintenance, as well as tracking a selection of building materials and components for the UK, and providing statistics on bricks and concrete blocks production, delivery and stock for Great Britain.
Building materials prices decrease across the board
Construction materials prices for All Work fell by 2.3% in the 12 months to March 2024, according to the latest figures published by the Department for Business and Trade. This was a bigger decrease than the 1.9% drop seen in the year to February 2024.
New Housing registered a 0.2% decrease, Repair and Maintenance was down by 0.9% and Other New Work decreased by 4.0%.
The figures demonstrate a continued cooling in materials cost inflation, compared to where prices have been in the last couple of years, albeit with differences in annual movement between some outlier materials, and therefore for different trades.
Flexible pipes and fittings, metal doors and windows and ready-mixed concrete were among the materials showing more than 10% annual growth in the year to March 2024 (20.6%, 17.4% and 12.4% respectively).
Fabricated structural steel and steel concrete rebar continue to show the biggest annual drops (-19.5% and -18.7% respectively) of the materials featured in the dataset.
