UK trade pricing · updated monthly
Official UK construction material price inflation, straight from the Department for Business and Trade's own monthly statistics, with a trade-quoting read on what it means. Not a live merchant price tracker: this is the official index, checked and dated.
UK construction material prices for ‘all work’ were 5.9% higher in the 12 months to July 2026, and 0.4% higher than the month before, per DBT's official statistics.
That headline figure hides much larger moves in specific materials. See the biggest risers and fallers below. This is an official price index, not a live merchant-by-merchant price tracker, and it is not a quote for any specific job.
DBT publishes construction material price indices split by the type of work the materials go into. Figures below are reproduced exactly as published, for July 2026.
| Category | 12-month change | Month-on-month change |
|---|---|---|
| All work | +5.9% | +0.4% |
| New housing | +4.9% | +0.4% |
| Other new work | +7.2% | +0.5% |
| Repair and maintenance | +5.5% | +0.4% |
| Period | Change |
|---|---|
| May 2026 → June 2026 (MoM) | +1% |
| June 2026 → July 2026 (MoM) | +0.4% |
| 12 months to June 2026 (YoY) | +6% |
| 12 months to July 2026 (YoY) | +5.9% |
A short recent trend, not a full multi-year chart yet. We will extend this once we have carried out enough monthly rechecks ourselves to build one honestly, rather than back-filling history we did not independently verify.
The aggregated categories above hide much larger swings in individual materials. In this edition, DBT's published table shows the 3 largest 12-monthincreases and the 2 largest decreases.
| Material | 12-month change |
|---|---|
| Fabricated structural steel | +20.9% |
| Pipes and fittings (rigid) | +15.5% |
| Pipes and fittings (flexible) | +11.7% |
| Electric water heaters | -1.5% |
| Cement | -3.5% |
An index like this tells you materials generally are getting more or less expensive. It is not the price your merchant will actually charge you today. Get a current quote from your own merchant or trade account before pricing a job, and use this page as a sense-check on the direction, not the number.
The headline figure can sit still while a material you rely on moves sharply in either direction. Steel and rigid pipe fittings are both running well ahead of the average this month, while cement is cheaper than a year ago. Check the biggest movers table for the categories closest to your own work.
For work quoted weeks or months before you buy the materials, a stated price-variation clause protects you from exactly this kind of movement: decide whether to absorb small changes and price-review beyond a stated threshold, rather than discovering the gap after the job is won.
Material inflation is exactly the kind of cost that erodes margin if it is not priced in. Run the actual current cost of your materials through the job price and margin calculator rather than quoting from memory of what materials used to cost.
Figures on this page are reproduced from the Department for Business and Trade (DBT)'s August 2026 edition of its Monthly Statistics of Building Materials and Components, covering July 2026 data, published by DBT on . DBT names each bulletin after its publication month, not the month the data describes. We have kept those two dates distinct throughout this page rather than conflating them.
On every figure shown above was checked cell by cell against DBT's published commentary and data tables. We did not independently audit DBT's underlying survey methodology or its wider revisions history.
Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. This page offers general market-direction information, not a quotation, valuation or purchasing advice for any specific job or material order.
An index tells you the direction; your own quote needs the real numbers behind it.