Construction falls in last quarter
Today's news of falling orders for new build construction will not be welcomed by trainee and qualified Commercial Energy Assessors (CEAs), On Construction Domestic Energy Assessor (OCDEA) or Code assessors for the Code for Sustainable Homes (CSH), which became effective today.
The overall volume of new build construction contracts fell by 8% in the first quarter (Q1) of this year (Jan - Mar 08) compared to the last quarter (Q4) of 2007, according to figures released by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) today.
Public and private housing
But that shields an alarming 27% fall in new public (includes housing association) and private housing for the same period.
The latest figures come just a week after homebuilders, Persimmon, announced it was to halt construction on new developments following a 24% slump in orders since January (2008). Taylor Wimpey has also reported a 26% decline.
Looking at the same period a year ago, the picture is more pronounced showing a 36% drop in public housing and 29% for private.
Non-domestic: public and private
The only sectors propping up the figures are the publicly-funded infrastructure and non-housing sectors, such as hospitals and Government buildings etc... which reported rises of 11% and 26% respectively.
In the private industrial and commercial sectors, industry construction orders fell 16% whilst commercial build suffered 8%.
So, I guess the market to be in right now is the public buildings sector providing Display Energy Certificates (DECs).
[Added: This post is a day late due to my insistence on using Google's new charting tool - I can report it would have been a lot quicker to have done the damn thing in Open Office and then screen-grabbed it.]
