{"id":30715,"date":"2026-05-07T11:40:25","date_gmt":"2026-05-07T11:40:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/30715\/"},"modified":"2026-05-07T11:40:25","modified_gmt":"2026-05-07T11:40:25","slug":"uk-builders-hit-by-biggest-surge-in-cost-inflation-in-nearly-four-years-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/30715\/","title":{"rendered":"UK builders hit by biggest surge in cost inflation in nearly four years"},"content":{"rendered":"

LONDON, May 7 (Reuters) – British builders saw one of the biggest month-on-month jumps in cost inflation on record in April, according to a survey on Thursday that also showed the Iran war<\/a> increased \u200bdelivery delays and other supply chain difficulties.<\/p>\n

The S&P Global UK Construction Purchasing Managers’ \u200cIndex’s measure of input cost inflation leapt to 81.4, its highest since June 2022. The jump from 70.5 in March was the second-biggest rise since 1997 when the data series began, only just shy of the 11-point \u200bjump from February to March.<\/p>\n

Sign up here.<\/a><\/p>\n

The headline construction PMI, which measures overall activity, fell to \u200b39.7 from 45.6, its weakest since November and below all economists’ expectations \u2060in a Reuters poll.<\/p>\n

S&P said around 69% of survey respondents reported a rise in their \u200binput costs in April, up from 48% in the month before.<\/p>\n

“A rapid acceleration of input cost \u200binflation was seen across the UK construction sector in April. Aside from the post-pandemic surge in input prices from early-2021 to mid-2022, the latest rise in purchasing costs was the steepest in three decades of data collection,” \u200bsaid Tim Moore, economics director at S&P Global Market Intelligence.<\/p>\n

The Bank of England is closely \u200bmonitoring measures of input prices and prices charged by companies as it tries to gauge whether the inflation \u200cimpact from \u2060the war will last long enough to require increases in borrowing costs.<\/p>\n

Businesses reported the most widespread delays in shipping times since December 2022, S&P said, as vessels were largely unable to pass through the Strait of Hormuz.<\/p>\n

The conflict in the Middle East also hit new orders, which \u200bdeclined at the sharpest \u200brate since last November.<\/p>\n

The \u2060pace of job-shedding also accelerated in April, with the employment index at its lowest since December, as firms cited less work and higher payroll \u200bcosts.<\/p>\n

Companies’ optimism about the coming 12 months dropped too.<\/p>\n

The construction PMI \u200bshowed civil engineering \u2060and residential house-building were the biggest drag on activity, while commercial building contracted less severely.<\/p>\n

The wider all-sector PMI, which includes previously released services<\/a> and manufacturing<\/a> figures, rose to 51.5 from March’s 49.9, reflecting stronger services \u2060performance.A \u200bseparate survey from the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, published \u200bearlier on Thursday, showed construction activity<\/a> in the three months to March was the weakest since the three months to June \u200b2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic partially closed building sites.<\/p>\n

Reporting by Suban Abdulla; Editing by Joe Bavier<\/p>\n

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab<\/a><\/p>\n

Purchase Licensing Rights<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LONDON, May 7 (Reuters) – British builders saw one of the biggest month-on-month jumps in cost inflation on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":30716,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[13361,13362,13363,13370,13369,11171,11173,13364,13365,13360,10329,11165,11169,8957,11155,13366,7574,13367,13368,5,6,462,11163],"class_list":{"0":"post-30715","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uk","8":"tag-boe","9":"tag-cen","10":"tag-cwp","11":"tag-destef-markets-macromatters","12":"tag-destortao","13":"tag-destoukbsm","14":"tag-destoukdnm","15":"tag-eci","16":"tag-eco","17":"tag-efmarkets-macromatters","18":"tag-emea","19":"tag-europ","20":"tag-fin","21":"tag-gb","22":"tag-gen","23":"tag-infl","24":"tag-job","25":"tag-mce","26":"tag-pmi","27":"tag-uk","28":"tag-united-kingdom","29":"tag-war","30":"tag-weu"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@UnitedKingdom\/116533108585077923","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30715","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30715"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30715\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30716"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30715"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30715"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30715"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}