BCIS CapX provides a comprehensive, detailed and easy-to-use method of measuring cost movement for building and civil engineering. Widely used in the construction and infrastructure sector to help fairly allocate risk between the client and sub-contractors.
Published: 10/09/2024
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 overall for 14th consecutive month
Construction materials prices for All Work fell by 1.0% in the 12 months to July 2024, according to the latest figures published by the Department for Business and Trade. This was a slightly larger decrease than the 0.9% fall seen in the year to June 2024.
New Housing registered a 0.4% increase, Repair and Maintenance was up by 0.5% and Other New Work decreased by 1.9% in the 12 months to July 2024.
Source: Department for Business & Trade – Building materials and components statistics, Table 1a
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 saw the biggest annual increase at 17.4%.
Gravel, sand, clays and kaolin, including the Aggregate Levy, fabricated structural steel, and steel concrete rebar continue to show the greatest annual drops (-13.4%, -10.5%, -7.2% respectively) of the materials featured in the dataset.
Source: Department for Business & Trade – Building materials and components statistics, Table 2
* DBT advises index values should not be relied upon for long-term contractual purposes, as they are based on relatively few quote
On a monthly basis, the most significant price differences was seen in aqueous paint (+4.0%).
DBT’s report also showed concrete block deliveries (seasonally adjusted) were down by 15.1% in the year to July 2024 and down by 7.5% on a monthly basis.
Brick deliveries (seasonally adjusted) increased by 1.4% in the 12 months to July 2024 and increased by 7.9% compared with June 2024. Stocks of all types of bricks at the end of July stood at 483.6 million, which was 0.8% lower than at the end of July last year (487.4 million).
By comparison with pre-pandemic activity levels, seasonally adjusted brick deliveries in July 2024 were 25% lower than in July 2019, and stocks were 27.4% higher.
Dr David Crosthwaite, Chief Economist at BCIS, said: ‘Generally, there’s continuing evidence of materials cost inflation cooling which is good news for the sector as a whole.
‘While brick/block deliveries may be lower, stock levels are higher than pre-pandemic so when demand picks up there shouldn’t be any shortages leading to price spikes.’
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