Construction output in Great Britain: December 2024, new orders and Construction Output Price Indices, October to December 2024

• Construction output is estimated to have increased by 0.5% in Quarter 4 (Oct to Dec) 2024 compared with Quarter 3 (July to Sept) 2024; this came solely from an increase in new work (1.2%), as repair and maintenance fell by 0.4%.

• Monthly construction output is estimated to have fallen by 0.2% in volume terms in December 2024; this came solely from a fall in repair and maintenance (1.8%) as new work grew by 1.1%. 

• At the sector level, five out of the nine sectors fell in December 2024; the main contributors to the monthly decrease were non-housing repair and maintenance, and private housing repair and maintenance, which fell by 1.8% and 1.4%, respectively.

• Total construction new orders fell by 2.4% (£231 million) in Quarter 4 2024 compared with Quarter 3 2024; this quarterly decrease came solely from infrastructure new work and private industrial new work, which fell by 23.5% (£496 million) and 19.7% (£197 million), respectively.

• Annual construction output increased by 0.4% in 2024 compared with 2023; this is the fourth consecutive year of annual growth.

• The annual rate of construction output price growth was 3.0% in the 12 months to December 2024.

Quarterly construction output is estimated to have grown by 0.5% in Quarter 4 (Oct to Dec) 2024. This was driven by growth in November 2024, up by 0.6% (revised from 0.4%), and followed no growth (0.0%) in October 2024 (revised from a fall of 0.3%).

Monthly construction output is estimated to have fallen by 0.2% in volume terms in December 2024.

Anecdotal evidence received from returns for our Monthly Business Survey for Construction and Allied Trades (MBS) suggested a negative effect of seasonal weather decreasing output. The Met Office confirmed in their Monthly climate summary (PDF, 5.9MB) that December 2024 saw unsettled weather, with Storm Darragh bringing heavy rain and gales.

Detailed growth rates

Quarter-on-quarter construction output growth in Quarter 4 2024

Construction output grew by 0.5% (£241 million) in Quarter 4 2024. The quarterly growth came solely from an increase in new work (1.2%), as repair and maintenance fell by 0.4%.

Of the nine sectors, six saw increases in Quarter 4 2024, with the largest contributors being private new housing and public other new work. These sectors grew by 1.3% (£127 million) and 4.3% (£121 million), respectively.

Month-on-month construction output growth in December 2024

The 0.2% fall in construction output in December 2024 represents a decrease of £40 million in monetary terms compared with November 2024, with five out of the nine sectors seeing falls on the month. The volume in December 2024 was £17,744 million.

Non-housing repair and maintenance, and private housing repair and maintenance were the largest negative contributors to the monthly decrease in December 2024, decreasing by 1.8% (£74 million) and 1.4% (£41 million), respectively.

Year-on-year change in construction output in 2024

Total annual construction output increased by 0.4% in 2024 compared with 2023. This is the fourth consecutive year of annual growth.

The annual increase in 2024 was solely because of a rise in repair and maintenance, which rose by 8.5%, as new work decreased by 5.3%.

At the sector level, four of the nine sectors saw an increase in annual growth in 2024. Non-housing repair and maintenance, and private housing repair and maintenance were the largest positive contributors, growing by 8.5% and 7.0%, respectively. The main negative contributor to annual growth was infrastructure new work, which fell by 9.3%.

In Quarter 4 (Oct to Dec) 2024, total construction new orders decreased by 2.4% (£231 million) compared with Quarter 3 (July to Sept) 2024. This follows a decrease of 23.7% in Quarter 3 2024 compared with Quarter 2 (Apr to June) 2024.

Quarter 4 2024 showed the lowest level of total construction new orders (£9,268 million) since Quarter 2 2020 (£6,024 million). More information can be found in our New orders in the construction industry dataset.

Other new orders (that is, non-housing) was the sole contributor to the decrease in Quarter 4 2024, falling by 9.1% (£671 million). This came from infrastructure new orders, which fell by 23.5% (£496 million) and was driven by decreases in electricity, harbours and railways. The other contributor to the fall in other new work was private industrial new orders, which decreased by 19.7% (£197 million).

Housing new orders saw an increase of 21.2% (£442 million). This came predominantly from private new housing, which increased by 24.0% (£438 million). Public new housing also increased by 1.6% (£4 million).

Prices in the construction industry, as estimated by our Construction Output Price Index (OPI), increased to 3.0% in the 12-month period to December 2024.

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

• our Construction output price indices (OPIs) QMI

• our New orders in construction QMI

Reasons for revisions to construction output in this release

This release contains revisions to construction output estimates from January 2024 onwards, and is consistent with the National Accounts Revisions Policy. Revisions in this release are a result of:

• revisions in the nominal data; this includes 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 Price 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.

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 gross domestic product (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 December 2024 showed improvement compared with levels in recent years since the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. The survey turnover response rate for December 2024 was 73.9%. This follows a response rate of 76.0% in November and 66.3% in October. We have continued not to apply 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".