Construction output in Great Britain: October 2022

• Monthly construction output is estimated to have increased 0.8% in volume terms in October 2022; this is the fourth consecutive monthly growth, with October 2022 being the highest level of construction output (£15,248 million) since records began in January 2010.

• Anecdotal evidence continues the narrative around the increased prices for certain construction products, however annual price growth is starting to ease from the high level in mid-2022; despite the current high prices, the construction industry is maintaining growth, and new orders books remain strong (see detail about these data in Section 2: Construction in Great Britain data)

• The increase in monthly construction output in October 2022 came from increases in both new work (0.5%) and repair and maintenance (1.3%) on the month. 

• At the sector level, five out of the nine sectors saw a rise in October 2022, with the main contributors to the monthly increase seen in private new housing, and non-housing repair and maintenance, which increased 2.9% and 1.7%, respectively.

• The level of construction output in October 2022 was 4.8% (£698 million) above the February 2020 pre-coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic level; new work was 0.2% (£21 million) above its February 2020 level, while repair and maintenance work was 13.5% (£677 million) above the February 2020 level.

• Alongside the monthly increase, construction output saw an increase of 1.1% in the three months to October 2022; this is the twelfth consecutive period of growth in the three-month-on-three-month series, and the increase came solely from growth in new work (3.1%) as repair and maintenance saw a decrease (2.1% fall).

Construction output estimates

Construction output estimates are monthly estimates of the amount of output chargeable to customers for building and civil engineering work done in the relevant period, excluding Value Added Tax (VAT) and payments to subcontractors.

Seasonally adjusted estimates

Seasonally adjusted estimates are derived by estimating and removing calendar effects (for example, leap years such as 2020) and seasonal effects (for example, decreased activity at Christmas because of site shutdowns) from the non-seasonally adjusted estimates.

Value estimates

The value estimates reflect the total value of work that businesses have completed over a reference month.

Volume estimates

The volume estimates are calculated by taking the value estimates and adjusting to remove the impact of price changes.

Quality and methodology

More quality and methodology information (QMI) is available in our:

• Construction output QMI

• Construction output price indices QMI

Reasons for revisions in this release

In line with the national accounts revision policy, there are no revisions to previously published data, and October 2022 is being produced for the first time.

For further information on the revisions profile, see our Output in the construction industry – revisions triangle (one-month growth) dataset and our Output in the construction industry – revisions triangle (three-month growth) dataset.

Sub-national and sub-sector construction output

Data on new orders supplied by Barbour ABI are used to model the breakdown of the overall output figures for Great Britain into the lower level and regional data seen in Tables 1 and 2 of our Output in the construction industry: sub-national and sub-sector dataset.

Bias adjustment

Typically, since the move to monthly GDP estimates, an adjustment to address any bias in survey responses for construction output is applied to the early construction output monthly estimates.

While the response rate for October 2022 has improved and is nearing comparable pre-coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic levels of response, it is still below this level, so we have not applied a bias adjustment for October 2022.

Differences with Monthly GDP construction estimates

In Blue Book 2021, a new framework was introduced to improve how we produce volume estimates of gross domestic product (GDP) for balanced years as part of the supply and use process. This framework included the implementation of double-deflated industry-level gross value added (GVA) for the first time. This improvement was reflected in our GDP quarterly national accounts, UK: April to June 2021 release and our GDP monthly estimate, UK: August 2021 release for the first time.

As a result, volume estimates in the monthly GDP and construction outputs releases will differ for the period 1997 to 2020 because the construction publication measures the volume of construction work (output), while the GDP series measures GVA (that is, output minus intermediate consumption). Construction estimates will align, however, from January 2021 onwards on a growth basis.

Articles on the impact of double deflation and Blue Book changes provide information and indicative effects of this change to industry-level GVA volume.