The Office for National Statistics published estimates of construction output, new orders, and output prices for May 2024 this morning.
- Monthly construction output is estimated to have grown by 1.9% in volume terms in May 2024; this follows a fall of 1.1% in April 2024 (revised from a fall of 1.4%).
- The increase in monthly output came from increases in both new work (2.7%), and repair and maintenance (0.8%); anecdotal evidence from survey returns noted that warmer weather contributed to increased output in May, with the Met Office confirming in their Monthly climate summary (PDF, 4.6MB) that May 2024 was the warmest on record.
- At the sector level, eight out of the nine sectors saw growth in May 2024, the main contributors to the monthly increase were a 2.8% increase in total new housing, with both private and public new housing increasing on the month, infrastructure new work, which rose by 3.5%, and non-housing repair and maintenance, which grew by 2.1% on the month.
Construction output is estimated to have fallen by 0.7% in the three months to May 2024; this came from a decrease in new work of 0.9%, and repair and maintenance, which fell by 0.3%.
Read the full report here.
Download the ONS Construction update here.
