Repair and maintenance and new build help drive activity to record figure

Construction output recovered in March with repair and maintenance and new build work helping send monthly growth to a record high, official figures published today reveal.

The Office for National Statistics numbers show output was up 1.7%, from just 0.1% the month before, to a figure of 拢14.994bn 鈥� the highest since records began in January 2010.

The increase was driven by a 3% rise in repair and maintenance and a 1% rise in new build.

cranes

Source: Shutterstock

Monthly output hit a record high, the ONS said

The ONS said private housing repair and maintenance (5.8%) and private commercial new work (4%) were the main contributors to the increase.

And the storms which were blamed for the fall in output in February came to the rescue in March with the ONS saying that anecdotal evidence 鈥渟uggested [the] storms [which included Dudley and Eunice] resulted in businesses seeing a higher workload in March 2022 because of the repair work derived from [them]鈥�.

Trends and prices data dashboard 

好色先生TV_data_graphic new

Your one-stop-shop for the all the latest price changes and trends in the building materials, energy, housing and construction labour markets.

好色先生TV鈥檚 trends and prices data dashboard pulls together figures from 14 different datasets into easy-to-use line graphs, bar charts and animated visualisations.

Click here to access 

March鈥檚 output level was 3.7% 鈥� or 拢539m 鈥� above the February 2020 pre-pandemic level, although new work was still 1.6% (拢148m) below the February 2020 level. But repair and maintenance was 13.8% (拢687m) above February 2020.

The ONS said construction output in the first quarter rose 3.8%, the strongest quarterly growth since the first quarter of 2017 where it rose 3.9%.

Overall, the economy shrank 0.1% in March, compared to no growth seen in February. In the first three months of the year, the economy grew 0.8%.