The Office for National Statistics is temporarily suspending publication of its house price index as a result of low transaction numbers.

The next release covering the month of March is due to be published on May 20 and will go ahead as planned, however April’s data will not be published on its scheduled date in June.

The ONS says: “The impact of covid-19 is expected to greatly reduce the amount of housing transactions that took place in April 2020, making it very difficult to produce a measure of UK house prices that would be representative of any true transaction activity within the housing market.

“We will continue to closely monitor the flow of transaction data with the view to reinstating the UK HPI as early as is practicable.”

The ONS plans to set out further detail of its plans in its May release.

It comes after figures from Halifax today showed that prices slipped by 0.6 per cent between March and April, but the lender warned that low transaction volumes mean the data is volatile and may not be a true reflection of market values.

Rightmove and Reallymoving have already suspended publication of their monthly data, while the companies behind other indices are still reviewing their options.

Last month, Brightstar called for all indices to be suspended in order to quell panic in the market.