UK Building Materials Price Index

The official UK construction material price indices as clean, ready-to-use data, updated every month. This Actor automatically finds the latest GOV.UK Building materials and components statistics release (Department for Business and Trade, using ONS producer price indices) and turns it into one tidy row per material.

• 30 materials and components: cement, ready-mixed concrete, precast concrete, reinforcing bar, fabricated structural steel, timber, plywood, insulation, plastic pipes, aggregates, paint, doors and windows, boilers, sanitaryware and more.
• Headline indices: All Work, New Housing, Other New Work, Repair and Maintenance.
• Changes already worked out: latest index, month-on-month %, change since the start of the series, and year-on-year % for the headline indices.
• Change since your base month: enter your tender or contract date and get the % movement for every material. This is useful for fluctuation claims, price adjustment and cost forecasting.
• Always the latest release: no hunting for this month's spreadsheet on GOV.UK.

Who it's for

• Quantity surveyors and cost consultants: cost planning, inflation allowances, fluctuation and price adjustment calculations
• Contractors and subcontractors: tracking material cost risk on fixed-price work
• Estimators and buyers: timing purchases and checking supplier price rises
• Analysts, journalists and AI agents: current construction inflation data in a machine-readable form

How to use it

1. Click Start to get every index from the latest release.
2. Optionally list materials to keep, by keyword (e.g. reinforcing, timber, cement).
3. Optionally set a base month such as 2025-09 to add the % change from then to the latest month.
4. Download as Excel, CSV or JSON, or schedule a monthly run so your sheet or dashboard always has the newest figures.

Example row

{
  "category": "Cement and concrete",
  "material": "Concrete reinforcing bars (steel)",
  "onsCode": "CRB",
  "latestPeriod": "2026-04",
  "latestIndex": 144.4,
  "monthOnMonthChangePercent": 3.6,
  "firstPeriod": "2025-07",
  "changeSinceFirstPeriodPercent": 1.7,
  "baseMonth": "2025-09",
  "baseIndex": 136.7,
  "changeSinceBasePercent": 5.6,
  "indexBase": "2015=100",
  "annualAverages": { "2021": 152.5, "2022": 210.4, "2023": 166.7, "2024": 148.7, "2025": 141.6 },
  "monthlySeries": [ { "period": "2025-07", "index": 142.0 }, "..." ],
  "sourceRelease": "Building materials and components statistics: August 2026",
  "nextPublication": "7 October 2026"
}

(Illustrative figures. Your run returns the current release.)

Output fields

Field	What it means
type	headline (All Work etc.) or material
category, material, onsCode	What the index measures, with its ONS series code
latestPeriod, latestIndex	Most recent month and its index value (2015 = 100)
monthOnMonthChangePercent	Change vs the previous month
firstPeriod, changeSinceFirstPeriodPercent	Change since the first month in the release's series
yearOnYearChangePercent	Change vs the same month last year, where the release covers it (headline indices)
baseMonth, baseIndex, changeSinceBasePercent	Only when you set a base month
annualAverages	Annual average index by year (headline indices back to 1996)
monthlySeries	Every monthly value in the release (headline monthly since 2021, materials for the latest ~14 months)
dataQualityRating	The ONS quality rating shown in the release
sourceRelease, sourceUrl, sourcePublished, nextPublication	Where the figures came from, and when the next update is due

Pricing

A small fee per index row (see the Pricing tab). A full run of about 50 rows costs well under a pound. Filter by keyword to pay only for the materials you need.

Notes

• Data: Building materials and components statistics, published monthly on GOV.UK under the Open Government Licence v3.0. This Actor isn't affiliated with DBT or ONS.
• Recent months are often provisional, and ONS may revise them in later releases.
• Some series are confidential ([c] in the source). They come back with null values.
• The latest figures usually lag publication by a few months. For example, the August 2026 bulletin runs to April 2026.
• For individual materials, the monthly release covers roughly the last 10 months, so year-on-year is only available for the headline indices. Base months earlier than that return null with a note. Use annualAverages for longer comparisons.
• Index figures show relative price movement, not actual prices.

Related

By the same developer: UK Subcontractor Health Check and UK Construction Payment League Table.