Builders Merchants Journal – BMJ Publishing to Builders Merchants and the UK merchanting industry for more than 95 years
Just hours after releasing figures that showed overall construction output had risen 2.3% from 0.5%, the Office of National Statistics admitted it had made a mistake.
A notice on the ONS website on Friday evening said that an “arithmetical error” meant that the headline construction growth for the second quarter was, in fact 0.5% and not 2.3% as had been announced and widely reported that morning.
Initially, the ONS said that it had revised its figures upwards, In any case, industry leaders, including Travis Perkins CEO Geoff Cooper, had for some time been saying that the figures bore little relation to what is actually happening in construction.
