Thanks to swift and generous efforts made by the Office for National Statistics I can give you the latest official update of activity in the rental and leasing world.

The latest data – a non-published sub-set of the Index of Services released this morning – shows a continued rise in the amount of work done by plant hire firms in the final quarter.

I have also updated the construction output figures to the latest index provided in the GDP series.

But sharp-eyed observers will note that there has been some revisions to the back data of plant hire activity, comparing this graph with the .

The latest data put the level the end of 2011 lower than the earlier data might have led us to expect.

The main thing is that the data supports the view that there was a reasonable recovery in activity at the end of last year. But that level is still about 7% below peak.

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