Construction output in Great Britain: August 2026

• Total construction output is estimated to have fallen by 1.0% in the three months to August 2026; this is the second consecutive decrease in the three-monthly series.

• Over the three-month period, both new work and repair and maintenance fell, by 1.4% and 0.3%, respectively.

• At the sector level, five out of the nine sectors fell in the three months to August 2026; the main negative contribution to the decrease was private new housing, which fell by 3.2%.

• Monthly construction output is estimated to have fallen by 0.2% in August 2026; this is the fourth consecutive decrease in the monthly series, including a decrease of 0.5% in July 2026 (revised from an increase of 0.1%), and a decrease of 0.3% in June 2026 (revised from a decrease of 0.1%).

• The decrease in monthly output in August 2026 came solely from a decrease in new work, which fell by 0.7%, while repair and maintenance grew by 0.4%; the main contribution to the monthly decrease in new work was private new housing, which fell by 1.9%.

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 2024) 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

• our Construction output price indices (OPIs) QMI

• our New orders in construction QMI

Data correction in public new housing sector

We identified a data error within the public housing new work sector from January 2022.

This error was because of incorrect data being used while processing improvements for the Blue Book 2025. Data from January 2022 have now been corrected in the Quarterly National Accounts release, published on 30 September 2026, and in this release.

We apologise for this data error. We have put in place additional quality assurance to improve our process and prevent a similar error in the future.

Revisions to construction output in this release

This release contains revisions for all periods. The revisions up to June 2026 are consistent with those published in our Gross domestic product (GDP) quarterly national accounts, UK: April to June 2026 bulletin, published on 30 September 2026. This is consistent with the National Accounts Revisions Policy. This has been updated to ensure we reflect the dynamic nature of the UK economy. Additionally, we have updated the base year to 2024.

Revisions in this release are a result of:

• revisions in the nominal data, including revisions to the survey data

• revisions to seasonal adjustment factors, which are re-estimated every month and reviewed annually

• revisions to the input series for the Construction output prices indices (OPIs)

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.

Seasonal adjustment

Our monthly construction estimates are seasonally adjusted. Seasonal adjustment is the process of removing the variations associated with the time of year, or the arrangement of the calendar, from a data time series.

Construction estimates, as for many data time series, are difficult to analyse using raw data because seasonal effects dominate short-term movements. Identifying and removing the seasonal component leaves the trend and irregular components.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) uses the X-13-ARIMA-SEATS approach to seasonal adjustment. Seasonal adjustment parameters are monitored closely and regularly reviewed. For more information, please see our seasonal adjustment methodology.

In our monthly estimates, seasonal adjustment is applied at the sector level and the seasonally adjusted series are aggregated to create estimates by total output. As part of our quality assurance approach, residual seasonality checks are regularly completed by our time series analysis team on both the directly seasonally adjusted series and the indirectly derived aggregate time series.

Based on our quality assurance as part of this publication, there is no statistically significant residual seasonality in our aggregate estimates in the period from January 1997 to August 2026. 

This topic is explored further in our article on assessing residual seasonality, published on 12 May 2026.

Subnational and subsector 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. This is shown in Tables 1 and 2 of our Output in the construction Industry: subnational and subsector dataset. More detail is available in our Quality assurance of administrative data used in construction statistics methodology.

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. We show this in our Improvements to construction statistics: Addressing the bias in early estimates of construction output, June 2018 article.

Response rates for August 2026 showed improvement compared with levels in recent years since the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. The survey turnover response rate for August 2026 was 85.4%. This follows first estimate response rates of 80.0% in July 2026 and 75.7% in June 2026. We have not applied a bias adjustment since May 2020 while we review this approach. More information on our response rates is available in our Output in the construction industry dataset.

Differences with monthly GDP construction estimates

In Blue Book 2021, we introduced a new framework to improve how we produce volume estimates of GDP for balanced years as part of the supply use process. This was explained in our Producing an alternative approach to GDP using experimental double deflation estimates article. This framework included the implementation of double-deflated industry-level gross value added (GVA) for the first time. This improvement was reflected in the GDP quarterly national accounts, UK: April to June 2021 bulletin and dataset and GDP monthly estimate, UK: August 2021 bulletin 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. This is 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, but on a growth basis from January 2021 onwards.

Information and indicative effects of this change to industry-level GVA volume can be found in our Impact of double deflation on industry chain volume measure annual estimates article and our Impact of Blue Book 2021 changes on quarterly volume estimates of gross domestic product by industry article.

Accredited official statistics

These accredited official statistics were independently reviewed by the Office for Statistics Regulation in March 2019. They comply with the standards of trustworthiness, quality and value in the Code of Practice for Statistics and should be labelled "accredited official statistics".

Review of release times for market-sensitive economic statistics

We are reviewing the release times for our market-sensitive economic statistics, such as Construction output in Great Britain. This review will consider whether the current arrangements continue to best serve the public good, support user needs and align with the principles set out in the Code of Practice for Statistics.

We are running a consultation to gather evidence on the impact of different release times. The consultation asks how you use market-sensitive economic statistics, your views on potential release time options, and any other considerations. Please note that this consultation will be closing on Friday 30 October 2026.