Construction sector output heats up following Beast from the East malaise

● But experts point to low confidence levels and price inflation pressures

Britain’s construction sector has continued its steady recovery since March’s Beast from the East disruption, notching up a further rise in output last month.

The latest Markit/cips purchasing managers’ index (PMI) for UK construction showed a reading of 53.1 in June, up from 52.5 in May and marking the strongest result since November. Any reading above 50 denotes expansion.

New orders also rose at the fastest pace since May 2017, according to the survey.

Housebuilding remained the best performing subsector, although the report also noted that commercial building work helped drive the pick-up in activity.

It marks the third month in a row of sustained recovery since the Beast from the East weather disruption in March, which hit building sites hard. Duncan Brock, group director at the Chartered Institute of Procurement & Supply (Cips), said: “With the fastest rise in new orders since May 2017, it appears the brakes are off for the construction sector.

“Despite being hampered by economic uncertainty, firms reported an improved pipeline of work as clients committed to projects and hesitancy was swept away.”

But he said the sector was “not out of the woods yet” as the report also showed that confidence among building firms remained lower than average in June, while price inflation hit a nine-month high. “A cloud of uncertainty remains, given the sector’s hit-and-miss performance so far this year and lower-thanaverage business confidence in June,” Brock added.

Blane Perrotton, managing director of property consultancy and surveyor Naismiths, said: “The construction industry somehow skipped springtime this year – and has been catapulted from a polar winter into a heatwave.

“True, the figures are flattered by comparison to the weak data recorded at the start of 2018, but such solid improvements in both output and new orders reveal some genuine momentum.

“In part this is the release of pent-up demand, which has been building for months. There is only so long that investment decisions can be delayed, and on the front line we’re seeing increasing numbers of developers opting to pull the trigger before the opportunity passes them by.”

The construction sector saw activity slump amid the snow disruption earlier this year, but official figures on Friday revealed it was not as bad as first feared. The Office for National Statistics revised up economic growth to 0.2 per cent in the first quarter.