Like-for-like value sales through specialist plumbing and heating merchants rose 1.3% year-on-year in May 2026, according to the latest Plumbing & Heating Merchant Index (PHMI), despite an 8.0% drop in sales volumes.
Prices increased 10.1% compared with May 2025, helping offset weaker demand. With one fewer trading day than a year earlier, unadjusted value sales fell 3.8%, while volumes dropped 12.6%.
Compared with April, like-for-like value sales were down 1.7%, with volumes falling 6.2% and prices rising 4.8%.
Over the three months to May, like-for-like value sales slipped 0.4% year-on-year as volumes declined 5.9%, offset by a 5.9% increase in prices. Compared with the previous three-month period, value sales were down 1.3%, although volumes increased 1.3% and prices fell 2.6%.
Across the 12 months to May 2026, like-for-like value sales were 1.0% higher than the previous year, with volumes down 3.7% and prices up 4.8%.
Mike Rigby, MD of MRA Research, which produces the PHMI, says:
“Sales through specialist plumbing and heating merchants are stuck in the Doldrums: value sales are weak, prices are rising and volumes are down year-on-year while the Government sorts itself out.
“However, with Andy Burnham due to take over the reins as Prime Minister mid-July, could this be the reset the industry needs – a fresh opportunity to get Britain building again and a shot in the arm for the building materials supply chain?
“The new Prime Minister is saying what the building industry wants to hear… But we’ve been here before and we’ve not seen the details, or a credible mechanism, or where the money or the people to build it all will come from.”
To download the latest report, visit www.phmi.co.uk
