Britain’s housing industry recorded its fastest growth in 24 years last month, bolstered by a jump in demand for brand spanking new homes and commercial property, but the world was beset by a record rise within the cost of raw materials.

The monthly purchasing managers’ index data underscored the speed of Britain’s broader economic rebound as coronavirus restrictions ease, and also how bottlenecks in supply chains are creating inflation pressures.

The IHS Markit/CIPS construction PMI jumped to 66.3 in June from 64.2 in May, its highest since June 1997 and in particular forecasts during a Reuters poll of economists.

Britain’s housing market has been boosted by a tax benefit for home-buyers which minister of finance Rishi Sunak is thankful for by the end of September.

The PMI’s input cost component was the very best since the series started in April 1997, and delivery times were the longest on record too.

“Supply chains once more struggled to stay up with demand for construction products and materials,” IHS Markit’s economics director Tim Moore said.

The Bank of England last month said it expected inflation to peak above 3% but it predicted https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKCN2E73SB the bottlenecks that are partly behind the increase will prove temporary.

Construction slumped at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic but recovered faster than other parts of Britain’s economy because it was less suffering from social-distancing restrictions and benefited from booming house prices. 

 Confidence among purchasing managers remained high but weakened to its lowest since January, partly thanks to rising costs and difficulties hiring construction workers. 

“Escalating cost pressures and concerns about labour availability appear to possess constrained business optimism at some building firms,” Moore said.

Separate PMI data for the private sector as an entire , which incorporates the much larger services sector and manufacturing, showed a little fall to 62.6 in June from May’s record-high