Materials, permissions and property prices
Explore relationships using current revised source data. Cost pressure can affect development viability, while permissions can enable future supply. These mechanisms are hypotheses to test; a correlation does not identify causality or predict the next price move.
Construction material price indices
Index points, 2015=100, not pounds per bag, brick or cubic metre. Product definitions differ. ONS series use the current corrected PPI vintage; accreditation remains suspended pending OSR review. Imported timber, plywood and rebar use the shorter published DBT window.
| Concrete reinforcing bars (steel) | 2026-08 | 156 | 12.5% | 13 | DBT publishes a short monthly window for this selection; no long-run correlation is inferred. |
| Imported plywood | 2026-08 | 140.2 | 7.1% | 13 | DBT publishes a short monthly window for this selection; no long-run correlation is inferred. |
| Imported sawn or planed wood | 2026-08 | 173.8 | -1.6% | 13 | DBT publishes a short monthly window for this selection; no long-run correlation is inferred. |
| Sand, gravel and clay | 2026-09 | 151 | 1.5% | 93 | Excludes Aggregate Levy. |
| Timber carpentry and joinery | 2026-09 | 168.6 | 3.2% | 93 | Other builders’ carpentry and joinery; not imported sawn timber. |
| Clay bricks and tiles | 2026-09 | 189.9 | 4.4% | 93 | Baked-clay construction products, including tiles; not bricks alone. |
| Cement | 2026-09 | 142 | 1.1% | 93 | Domestic producer prices; not merchant bag prices. |
| Concrete construction products | 2026-09 | 197.7 | 3.4% | 93 | Domestic producer prices for concrete construction products. |
Do movements correlate?
Compare year-on-year percentage changes, rather than two rising index levels. At a 12-month lead, the material’s annual change in month t is paired with housing’s annual change in t+12. This is an observation-date comparison, not a real-time trading backtest; historical releases can have been revised.
Cement price index
PPI INDEX OUTPUT DOMESTIC - C2351 Cement 2015=100. Domestic producer prices; not merchant bag prices.
Aligned annual changes (%)
Horizontal dates refer to the housing observation. Material observations are shifted by 0 months. No forward-filled values; exact matched months only.
United Kingdom: Cement association tests
Selected comparison: Pearson r = 0.47 across 68 monthly pairs (2021-01–2026-08). r ranges from −1 to +1; it is not the percentage of price change caused by the material.
| 0 months | 68 | 0.47 | 0.49 | 0.04 | 0.13 | Exploratory association |
| 6 months | 68 | -0.15 | -0.02 | -0.72 | -0.69 | Exploratory association |
| 12 months | 68 | -0.56 | -0.44 | -0.88 | -0.85 | Exploratory association |
| 24 months | 56 | -0.21 | -0.25 | -0.57 | 0.23 | Exploratory association |
At least 36 matched months required. Year-on-year changes overlap and are serially correlated; monthly pairs are not independent trials. No significance claim, causal estimate or validated forecast is made. All four predefined lags are shown to reduce cherry-picking. Changes across halves flag instability; mortgage rates, demand and the pandemic can confound the relationship. National materials are common inputs, not local material-price observations.
Planning consents and the supply pipeline
Permissions → starts → completions
A permission is an option to build. Infrastructure, conditions, funding, viability and delivery delays affect whether homes become available. Lower permissions can constrain later supply; more permissions can ease scarcity if homes are built. This panel does not establish a price effect.
212,492 permitted homes
England, rolling year to 2026 Q2. Detailed permissions / reserved matters, from MHCLG’s contextual Glenigan series. Not completed homes.
296 planning authorities
Major and minor residential application counts. General English LPAs only; special authorities and National Parks are excluded. Counts are not housing units.
England: homes permitted, rolling annual total
Four-quarter rolling totals overlap. Glenigan contextual data are not designated accredited official statistics. These units are separate from PS2 application counts.
Residential applications granted by English region
2026 Q2, major + minor dwelling applications. Missing returns are disclosed in source rows. Larger regions naturally have more applications; these counts are not a per-home supply rate.
Residential consent decisions by local planning authority
| Adur | South East | 2026 Q2 | 0 | 7 | 7 | 87.5% | 16.7% |
| Amber Valley | East Midlands | 2026 Q2 | 1 | 14 | 15 | 93.8% | -21.1% |
| Arun | South East | 2026 Q2 | 1 | 12 | 13 | 50% | 18.2% |
| Ashfield | East Midlands | 2026 Q2 | 5 | 11 | 16 | 88.9% | 60% |
| Ashford | South East | 2026 Q2 | 4 | 31 | 35 | 76.1% | 40% |
| Babergh | East of England | 2026 Q2 | 0 | 19 | 19 | 67.9% | -26.9% |
| Barking and Dagenham | London | 2026 Q2 | 1 | 15 | 16 | 69.6% | 220% |
| Barnet | London | 2026 Q2 | 3 | 35 | 38 | 53.5% | -24% |
Approval rate = grants / decisions for major and minor dwelling applications, not all planning applications. Annual comparisons can be affected by authority boundary changes and missing returns. Do not equate a high approval rate with abundant housing supply.
Next supply test: consents relative to the local housing stock
Use permitted housing units per 1,000 existing homes, then follow starts and completions over 1–3 years alongside wages, mortgage conditions and household growth. A validated local housing-unit and stock join is needed before claiming that restrictive consenting raises local prices. Current area data measure application counts, so that causal comparison has not been estimated. Planning-authority boundaries must also be matched to the housing-price geography; a district cannot be treated as an entire county.