August monthly construction statistics update from BEIS
The latest Monthly Construction Update from the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (BEIS), which continues to name the Builders Merchant Building Index (BMBI) as one its sources, is now available.
Highlights from the August edition of BEIS’ construction update include the latest BMBI figures, which showed that total Builders Merchants value sales for May 2019 were flat (+0.0%) compared with May 2018, when unadjusted for trading days. Sales were up 6.0% compared with the previous month.
Overall performance in the construction industry appears to have been less positive in June, however. The Office for National Statistics’ provisional estimate of construction output for June 2019 showed that construction output decreased by 1.3% in Quarter 2 2019 largely reversing the increase of 1.4% in Quarter 1 2019. In the monthly series, construction output fell by 0.7% in June 2019.
Also included in the construction update is the latest edition of the Monthly Statistics of Building Materials and Components, which is published by BEIS. This showed that annual materials price inflation in June 2019 was 3.0%. The biggest price increase was for taps and valves for sanitaryware which rose by 13.5% compared with June 2018, while the biggest decrease was for electric water heaters which fell by 16.4% over the same period.
Moving onto indicators for July, IHS Markit CIPS recently published their latest construction purchasing managers index for July 2019. This showed that construction sector PMI in the UK rose to 45.3 in July, up slightly on June’s 43.1 but registering below the 50.0 no-change mark for the fifth time in six months. It is reported in the construction update document that this reading signalled the lowest degree of confidence since November 2012.
The construction update report from BEIS is available for download below, or on the Construction Leadership Council’s website.
Download Construction Update Report
BMBI, a brand of the BMF, is the most reliable source of data for the RMI market. It reports on merchants’ sales to builders and other trades using data from over 80% of generalist builders’ merchants, by value. The merchants provide sales data to GfK’s ground-breaking Builders Merchant Panel and MRA Research uses this data to produce monthly and quarterly reports. Leading industry experts are also a key part of the Index, speaking for their markets, explaining trends and adding context to the data.
