LOOKING UP IN SHORT TERM
Survey shows manufacturing and services sector enjoying strong growth
HOUSEBUILDER AVANT Homes has announced plans for a new multi-million pound development in Idle, near Bradford, where it will build 60 new homes.
The Wakefield-based firm will take on the 4.8-acre Sandhill Croft development, located off Sandhill Fold, just four miles from the city centre and 13 miles from Leeds.
It will provide housebuyers in West Yorkshire with a mixture of three-bedroom semi and townhouses and four-bedroom detached homes.
Full planning permission has been granted for the £15.4m development and work at the site has already commenced, with completion expected in 2019.
Avant Homes Yorkshire managing director, Mark Mitchell, said: “Sandhill Croft sits in a highly desirable location just a short drive away from both Leeds and Bradford, giving buyers the best of city and village life combined.” BRITISH MANUFACTURERS reported the fastest export growth in more than two years in early 2017 and the services sector also recovered to rack up its strongest sales growth since last June’s Brexit vote, according to a business survey.
The British Chambers of Commerce (BCC), which runs Britain’s largest quarterly private-sector business survey, said firms reported a robust short-run outlook.
However, there was much more uncertainty about the medium term as well as fears of sharply rising costs.
Britain’s economy bucked most economists’ expectations that it would slow sharply immediately after the vote to leave the European Union.
Exporters have been in a positive mood helped by a recovering global economy and a fall in the value of sterling.
However, growth is expected to weaken this year as consumers – the mainstay of last year’s expansion – come under pressure from higher inflation after sterling’s post-referendum tumble.
Adam Marshall, the directorgeneral of the BCC, said: “Many firms tell us their short-term expectations are strong, but that the medium-term picture is far from clear.”
A similar message came from smaller companies, whose morale rose to its highest since late 2015, according to a survey also released yesterday by the Federation (FSB).
Mike Cherry, chairman of the FSB, said: “We cannot rely in the long term on the boost that exporters have received from a weak pound.”
The FSB said a quarter of small businesses would be deterred from exporting to the EU if they faced any tariffs after Britain leaves the bloc in 2019.
A separate survey by market research company Nielsen, conducted after Prime Minister Theresa May formally started the clock on Brexit talks on March 29, showed consumer confidence was stable. But worries of Small Businesses were growing about rising prices – especially among people who had voted to leave the EU. Steve Smith, Nielsen’s managing director for the UK and Ireland, said: “Although immigration concerns have dropped, Leavers are starting to worry more about everyday matters, particularly rising utility bills and food prices.”
The BCC said raw material costs were having the biggest influence on prices since late 2011, and called inflation “a key risk to the UK’s growth prospects”.
Official data on Tuesday showed consumer price inflation held at its highest in nearly four years at 2.3 per cent in March.