The latest construction new orders figures give no comfort to those fearing a nasty second bout of recession in construction. The numbers bounced up a little in the third quarter but remain on a downward path if looked at on an annualised basis, as can be seen from the graph (more graphs below).
Here’s a graph (below) that probably illustrates as well as you can the economic plight we face. It compares the depth and length of the current depression (the period when GDP is below the previous peak) with those of the Great Depression of the 1930s and the lesser affair in the 1990s It shows, based on the latest growth forecast, how on the depression we are living through is likely to last two and a half years longer than the Great Depression. It’s…
Who’s been advising the Government on construction? The reason I ask is because if you want to get big bang for your buck in a time of recession in the short term what you do is invest in refurbishment projects and house building.
How much will today’s announcements by the Chancellor George Osborne really change the picture for construction? Will the promise of jam today, tomorrow and for every day in this Parliament really amount to a hill of beans? Well no. But if you want to carry on to find out why not, here we go. I’ll start by trying to get a handle on what the funding gap might be for construction. In fairness its all a bit hypothetical and rests…
On the face of it the Homes and Communities Agency statistics for affordable housing starts are absolutely awful. I’m going to go out on a limb and accept that they look significantly worse as a snapshot of what is going on than the reality on the ground. The data suggest that the starts are back-end loaded within the financial year, so a drop in this half of the year would have been expected. Obviously this drop was greatly exaggerated by…
Construction plant hire prices jumped almost 4% in the third quarter of this year, according to the latest set of official figures for services producer prices. The data suggests that prices are up more than 4.2% on a year ago. Less than inflation, but it that’ll be welcomed as good news for plant hirers. It will however not be received so favourably by the contracting community which is already under severe cost pressures and struggling to hold their prices, it…
The latest construction survey from the surveyors’ body RICS adds more weight to the forecasts that the industry is tipping into recession. The figures show that while 19% of firms increased work in the third quarter of this year 20% saw workloads fall, providing a net balance of -1%. Basically that’s flat and on the RICS measure the industry has been pretty much hovering between a rise and a fall for the best part of two years since it pulled…
There’s little doubt that we need radical solutions to build more homes. There is a broad consensus for that view, leaving aside supporters of Malthus, the Daily Telegraph anti-house-building campaign and a few others. There’s little doubt also that the issues are complex and we need a strategy rather than one big idea to save the day. But unless I am very much mistaken the 88-page Laying the Foundations: A Housing Strategy for England probably doesn’t amount to a strategy…
Right off as a myth the idea that a huge slice of the nation’s small and medium enterprises is gagging for cash to grow their businesses yet being denied by reluctant bankers. What’s more the vast majority – eight out of 10 – SMEs are satisfied with their banks. And this is as true of construction firms as it is of firms in general. That certainly is one reading of the findings from the second survey of a major independent quarterly…
Housing completions in England in the third quarter of this year at just 24,250 were the lowest in a generation or two at least. The Government can hide its shame a little by pointing to the seasonally adjusted figures which show completions in the final quarter of 2010 were lower. This still falls within the current Government’s time in office, but they have some room then to blame their predecessors. While a decline in the social sector might be expected,…