It was bound to take its toll eventually. Since 2021, the cost-of-living crisis has been a constant cloud hanging over the heads of UK consumers. And despite the news that Britain’s inflation rate could drop to below 2% by the end of the year–having reached a 41-year...
Last week’s Budget saw the Chancellor, Jeremy Hunt unveiling plans to maintain the 5p cut in fuel duty for a further 12 months as inflation remains high – saving the average driver £100 next year. Whilst the freeze in fuel duty is a much-needed measure for...
Profits seem to be returning to normal for the construction industry, as Lendlease’s profits rebound to £20m and it seems as though the supply chain is just about coping. Lendlease Construction (Europe) has delivered a strong rebound in profit this year to £20m – a huge increase from just £3.9m in 2020. This is due in part to its strong pipeline...
The latest payroll data from Hudson Contract shows that the average weekly earnings for self-employed tradespeople had increased to £929 per week during August 2021. Year on year, earnings increased by 5.9%. This increase has encouraged the cost of hiring labour to increase too, rising by 2.8% last month. In particular, labour costs in the East...
England house prices grew by 7.0% in the year to July 2021, down from 13.2% in June 2021. The North East was the fastest growing region with annual growth of 10.8% in the year to July 2021. The lowest annual growth was in London, where prices increased by 2.2% over the year to July 2021. On a non-seasonally adjusted basis, average house prices in...
All statistics are based on those surveyed and compare June 2021 to June 2020, with the exception of confidence; confidence is compared at the time the survey was taken (August 2021) to the same time last year. OVERALL PERFORMANCE year-on-year The UK Landscape Barometer has reported that confidence has decreased for the third month in a row, now...
The Government have published the results of the Bacon Review following a commission by the Prime Minister to set out a plan for a major scaling of self-commissioned housing across all tenures in England. Custom Build Homes (CBH) welcomes the Report by Richard Bacon MP for South Norfolk which has taken several months to prepare. If fully...
According to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), construction in the UK fell by 1.3% in June, and this was the largest monthly decline since December 2020 when output fell by 2.2%. The 1.3% (178M) fall recorded in June was due to a decline in repair and maintenance (4.2%) offset by a small increase in new work (0.5%). Construction output in...
The RICS construction and Infrastructure survey for Q2 2021 has confirmed that the supply chain is struggling under the huge pressure of keeping up with the increase in new housing and infrastructure across the UK. An increase in the private residential sector continued to lead in the construction market. 50% of respondents reported an increase...
All statistics are based on those surveyed and compare May 2021 to May 2020, with the exception of confidence; confidence is compared at the time of survey (July 2021) to the same time last year. The material shortage, perhaps unsurprisingly, continued to have a damaging effect on the industry. As a result of the ongoing lack of material...
The torrential rain throughout May has been blamed for a fall in construction output as businesses lost working days. Monthly construction output fell by 0.8% in May 2021 compared with April 2021, falling to £13,960 million, and this follows the 0.7% monthly decline in April 2021. Both of these declines in monthly growths come after an...
The bellwether IHS Markit/CIPS UK Construction PMI Total Activity Index hit 66.3 in June, up from 64.2 in May. This presenting the strongest rate of growth for 24 years (since 1997). Key findings included: a rapid rise in new business volumes during May, output growth accelerated to its strongest since September 2014, and cost inflation hit a...
House prices UK house prices increased by 8.9% in the year to April 2021, down from 9.9% in March 2021. On a non-seasonally adjusted basis, average house prices in the UK decreased by 1.9% between March and April 2021, compared with a decrease of 1.0% during the same period a year earlier (March and April 2020). The North East showed the...
The trading month for April 2021 saw a change in the industry’s overall performance. For the first time in five months, the UK Landscape Barometer has reported that confidence across the industry has decreased. Indeed, a staggering 47% of participants have told us that they are feeling less confident compared to the previous month. Alongside this...
Monthly construction output fell by 2.0% in April 2021 compared with March 2021, falling to £13,961 million, and was the first month-on-month fall since December 2020 when output fell by 2.2% according to the Office of National Statistics. This comes directly after a strong increase in March 2021, where output increased by 5.8%. The fall occurred...
After a rapid recovery in construction this year amid the slow easing of lockdown restrictions, the Construction Skills Network (CSN) has reported that by 2025 the sector will need to have recruited an additional 217,000 new workers just to meet the demand. According to the CSN, most English regions will experience an increase in construction...
Once again, the UK Landscape Barometer can confidently report there has been dominantly high performance across all sectors for the trading month of March 2021. Overall, garden designers continued to present the highest percentages in increases. This comes as no surprise due to the high number of people wanting to improve and enhance their...
The average costs for hiring tradespeople has risen by nearly 20% since the start of the lockdown a year ago, according to Hudson Contract. Hudson Contract is a payroll firm that manages the earnings of more than 30,000 construction workers, and also supplies more than 2,500 construction companies. All regions across England have seen...
Construction output grew by 5.8% in March 2021 compared with February 2021. This lifts work to be above the pre-pandemic level recorded last February. Following monthly growth in March 2021, the level of construction output recovered to 2.4% above its pre-pandemic February 2020 level. The strong growth in activity in March was driven by both new...
During the first three months of 2021, local building firms across the UK saw the fastest increase of enquiries in a decade, according to new data from the Federation of Master Builders (FMB) Scotland. The latest FMB State of Trade Survey for 2021, the only survey of its kind to track the experience of small to medium-sized (SME) construction...
Last month Pro Landscaper’s UK Landscape Barometer discovered that there has been a significant increase in enquiries, projects, and conversion rates. Overall, there was an average increase of 90% in conversion, 92% in projects, and 97% in enquires for garden designers and the design and build industry. UK Landscape Barometer participants...
Tradespeople in the UK have expressed they are feeling less optimistic about the year ahead than their antipodean counterparts, according to recent research from Tradify. Whilst the majority of UK tradespeople believe that general business conditions will improve over the next year, 13% believe things will get worse - more than triple when...
February 2021 saw a dominantly high performance across all industry types, displaying no declines, according to our latest UK Landscape Barometer. ONS recently released statistics stating that work in the construction industry saw an increase of 1.6% in February 2021, and our latest UK Landscape Barometer supports this. Nationally, projects were...
House price headline statistics for February 2021: The average house price was £250,341 The annual price change for a property in the UK was 8.6% The monthly price change for a property in the UK was 0.0% The monthly index figure for the UK was 131.3 House prices UK house prices increased by 8.6% in the year up to February 2021, up from 8.0% on...
Construction activity has continued to grow throughout the first quarter of 2021 as it recovers from the impact of COVID-19, and is expected to hit double figure growth this year according to the Construction Product Association. The CPA forecasts that it will be next year before the industry recovers the output lost in 2020 to return to 2019...
Construction output rose by 1.6% in February 2021, marking a second monthly rise according to the latest ONS figures. New work saw an increase of 1.5% and there was a 1.9% rise in repair and maintenance. This was the highest monthly growth in all work since September 2020 when it grew by 1.8%. The monthly increase in new work was due to growth in...
New planning rules will help support the conversion of commercial buildings into homes. In turn, this will benefit highstreets by removing unused buildings and eyesores and will allow for efficient use of brown field land. The package comes at a good time as we surface from the pandemic by providing encouragement for high streets to adapt and...
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