Journal · Industry data
The average hides the plumbing
Official statistics published on 5 August put materials for repair and maintenance work up 5.7% in a year. Underneath that average, rigid pipes and fittings rose 12% while cement fell 4.5% — and which basket your project draws from decides what happens to the quote.
On 5 August the government published its monthly building-materials statistics — accredited official statistics, with a published method, covering the prices of the actual stuff renovation work is made from. The index for repair and maintenance materials rose 5.7% in the year to June 2026, and 1.5% in a single month. If you are comparing quotes for a bathroom or a kitchen right now, that release explains more about the numbers in front of you than any showroom conversation will.
A renovation quote is labour, materials and margin. The labour market moves slowly. The materials market, on this evidence, is moving at one to two per cent a month — and not evenly.
The headline numbers
rise in repair-and-maintenance materials, year to June 2026
of that arrived in one month, May to June
rise in rigid pipes and fittings over the year
fall in cement over the same year
The average hides the plumbing
The 5.7% is an average across everything from timber to paint, and averages flatter. The three steepest rises in the year to June were fabricated structural steel at 17.7%, rigid pipes and fittings at 12.0% and gravel, sand and clays at 11.4%. The three biggest falls were cement at −4.5%, ready-mixed concrete at −1.1% and electric water heaters at −0.5%.
Read that against an actual project and the spread starts to matter. A bathroom is a plumbing-heavy job — first-fix pipework, fittings, brassware — so its materials basket has been running well ahead of the published average. A job that leans on screed and concrete, a levelled floor or an extension slab, has actually had a kinder year. Two rooms in the same house are living in two different markets.
Twelve-month price change, selected materials
Change in UK price indices, June 2025 to June 2026
| Structural steel | 17.7% | |
|---|---|---|
| Pipes & fittings | 12% | |
| Gravel & sand | 11.4% | |
| All materials | 6% | |
| Repair & maintenance | 5.7% |
Values are the percentage change in official price indices over the twelve months to June 2026. The chart shows the three steepest risers against the two headline averages; the biggest fallers — cement (−4.5%), ready-mixed concrete (−1.1%) and electric water heaters (−0.5%) — cannot be drawn on a single-direction bar. Source: Monthly Statistics of Building Materials and Components, published 5 August 2026.
What this does to a quote
At 1.5% a month, a quote written in January and a quote written in August are priced from genuinely different materials markets. That is worth knowing before you conclude that the second firm is dearer, or that the first has sharpened its pencil for you.
Two honest quotes for the same bathroom, written six months apart, can disagree by the market alone.
It also makes one question worth asking of any quote you are holding: is the price fixed, and until when? A fixed price means the maker carries the materials risk from the day you sign. A quote with provisional sums — common for tiles, stone and sanitaryware the client has not chosen yet — leaves those lines exposed to the market until they are ordered. Neither approach is wrong, but you should know which one you are holding, and for which lines.
The market behind the lead times
The same release carries the demand side. The ONS puts private housing repair and maintenance output down 5.0% in May, and the Construction Products Association expects private housing renovation work to shrink 8% across 2026. So the market is soft while materials are dear — an odd combination, and a useful one to understand: capacity is easier to find than it was, but nobody is buying their way to a cheap bathroom through the materials bill.
What we'd take from it
Three things. First, date every quote — treat the date as part of the price, and when comparing two, check they were written in the same season of this market. Second, ask what is fixed and what is provisional; the honest answer tells you where the risk sits. Third, if your project is plumbing-heavy, the 12% line is your line — budget against it, not against the 5.7% average that the headlines will quote.
The caveat is the usual one with indices: these figures track materials, not finished projects. Labour is excluded, and on most bespoke work labour is the larger share of the bill and the steadier one. And the next edition lands on 2 September, at which point June's numbers will already be old — which is rather the point about dating your quote.