In isolation, a drop in concrete sales might look like a cyclical blip — a short-term blip in construction commodity markets. In 2026, however, that description has become untenable. According to industry figures compiled by the Mineral Products Association (MPA), UK ready-mix concrete sales fell by 9.9 % across 2025, marking their lowest level in 75 years. In London, the slump was even more pronounced — concrete volumes are down 27 % on 2023 levelsand well below historic norms.
Concrete is the most widely used human-made material on the planet; if its demand is collapsing, something deeper is going on in the construction and planning pipeline. Additional MPA data shows that concrete volumes in the second quarter of 2025 were the lowest since 1963, with total sales over the preceding 12 months at just 11.9 million cubic metres — a drop that matches declines seen only in the middle decades of the last century.
The slump is not isolated to a single product. Other mineral products — aggregates, asphalt and mortar — have also seen historically weak volumes, reflecting a broader contraction in heavy-side construction demand.
This matters because material demand is not a lagging indicator: it is a leading one. Builders order concrete at the start of projects, not the end. When sales fall persistently, it signals that projects are either not starting or are stalling long before groundwork begins. The London market, which accounts for a disproportionate share of high-density housing and large-scale development, has been hammered particularly hard, reflecting not only broader market weakness but specific planning bottlenecks — especially around tall buildings subject to extended Building Safety Regulator checks.
The slump also intersects with other structural trends in construction inputs. Recent data shows UK cement production fell to its lowest level since the 1950s, with domestic output in 2024 at around 7.3 million tonnes, barely half of 1990 levels. At the same time, imports have risen sharply, accounting for 32 % of the UK market.
This runs deeper than a market downturn. It reflects confidence evaporating across the construction ecosystem — from planners and developers to materials manufacturers. The MPA and industry leaders argue that the weak material demand reveals not just short-term economic headwinds but systemic obstacles: planning delays, regulatory uncertainty, weak investment signals and delivery failures.
Concrete volume data dovetails with other indicators of delivery stress. House-building numbers — 309,600 homes built in the 18 months following the 2024 general election — are far below the Labour government’s 1.5 million promised target. Meanwhile, major infrastructure projects have been paused or scaled back, dampening demand for materials that underpin both housing and transport capacity.
Planning and delivery are causally tangled here. If regulatory bottlenecks and risk-averse approval regimes prevent schemes from progressing to construction, the immediate effect is a slump in ordering materials — which feeds back into contractor confidence, employment, and supply chain capacity. The decline in concrete sales is not merely a symptom of weak house- building; it is house-building slowing down — materially, measurably, at the first stage of the pipeline.
Ultimately, the data forces a simple conclusion: policy ambition without delivery clarity produces supply outcomes that look like contraction, not growth. If building isn’t happening, the industry’s most basic inputs will show it first and most starkly. Concrete doesn’t lie — and right now its numbers suggest a system stuck in gridlock rather than accelerating toward the very targets policymakers proclaim.
