The decline in UK construction activity was less pronounced in December but it’s still a terrible end to the year for the sector. There were sharp falls once again in housing, commercial and civil
\nengineering activity as incoming new work remains subdued. Civil engineering (32.9) was the weakest-performing category of
\nconstruction activity in December, and that is despite
\nrecording a softer rate of contraction than in November. Meanwhile, both housing activity (33.5) and commercial
\nconstruction (42.0) decreased to the greatest extent since
\nMay 2020. Ouch.<\/p>\n
The only positive footnote is that business activity expectations rebounded to five-month high. But that’s about it.<\/p>\n
S&P Global notes that:<\/p>\n
“UK construction companies once again reported
\nchallenging business conditions and falling workloads
\nin December, but the speed of the downturn moderated
\nfrom the five-and-a-half-year record seen in November.
\nMany firms cited subdued demand and fragile client
\nconfidence. Despite a lifting of Budget-related
\nuncertainty, delayed spending decisions were still cited
\nas contributing to weak sales pipelines at the close of
\nthe year.\n<\/p>\n
“By sector, latest data indicated the fastest reductions
\nin housing and commercial construction since May 2020,
\nwhile civil engineering was the only segment to signal a
\nslower pace of decline than in the previous month.\n<\/p>\n
“Total new orders nonetheless decreased to a much
\nlesser degree than in November, while business activity
\nexpectations for the year ahead rebounded to a fivemonth high. Some survey respondents attributed greater
\noptimism to projections of rising infrastructure spending,
\nespecially in the utilities sector. There were also hopes
\nthat lower borrowing costs and easing inflationary
\npressures could boost demand across the construction
\nsector.\n<\/p>\n
“Supplier performance meanwhile improved for the
\nfifth month running, largely due to lower input buying.
\nThis also contributed to a slowdown in purchasing price
\ninflation to its weakest since October 2024.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The decline in UK construction activity was less pronounced in December but it’s still a terrible end to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":209131,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[45,49,48,46],"class_list":{"0":"post-394184","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-economy"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394184","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=394184"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394184\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/209131"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=394184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=394184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=394184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}