Construction in the UK reached its slowest pace for 17 months in December of last year. The industry has still expanded regardless, “but it has become a victim of its own success as it struggles to keep up with its own speed of recovery”, according to David Noble of the Chartered Institute of Procurement and Supply.
According to the Financial Times, “confidence in house-building still remains high, with 52% of survey respondents predicting a rise in business activity over the course of 2015”. One of Britain’s major house-builders, Persimmon, have attributed the slowdown to “a shortage of workers with joinery and bricklaying skills”. Tim Moore, senior economist at Markit, believes it’s a combination of “greater caution towards new development projects” and “renewed uncertainties about the demand outlook”.
In 2010, the ‘self-build’ sector was hailed as a solution to the housing crisis at the time, but in a similar scenario to the one reflected in Moore’s comments, “one of the reasons individual self-builders repeatedly give as a reason why their projects fail to get off the ground is finance.” Savills pointed out that Britain was entering a “housing crisis” in May last year, when stats showed that there was a deficiency of over 14,000 in the capital alone.
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