The latest Construction Trade Survey from the Construction Products Association (CPA) has highlighted a mixture of growth and weakness during Q4 of 2024.
The end of 2024 remained a mixed quarter for firms in the construction supply chain. In the final three months of the year, construction product manufacturers reported a third quarter of growth in sales volumes, while civil engineering contractors reported an increase in workloads, marking the seventeenth quarter of growth.
Infrastructure was the sole sector of growth in chartered surveyors’ workloads during the quarter too, with a marginally negative net balance overall led by weakness in new housing – both private and public. Most downbeat during Q4 were the results from the FMB’s survey of SME contractors, who reported not only a broad fall in workloads, but an equally broad decline in new enquiries as well as a decrease in employment over the period.
Official data on construction has also presented a mixed picture, with total construction output in Q4 rising 0.5% according to the ONS, as private housing, commercial and industrial activity staged the beginnings of their recovery. It may, therefore, be a one or two-quarter lag before this early pickup moves through and is felt by the entire supply chain. However, while product manufacturers, civil engineers and chartered surveyors anticipated rising sales and activity over the next 12 months, and civil engineering contractors’ order books increased, the fall in SME contractors’ enquiries echoed the weakness in the ONS new orders data.
The SME enquiries balance was the lowest in a year and balances across the three main sectors of operation (house building, RM&I and commercial/industrial) all worsened from Q3, which suggests that households and smaller businesses and clients are still reticent to give the green light to large spending commitments given the macroeconomic backdrop of flatlining GDP growth, accelerating inflation and interest rates still some way from settling at a new normal.
You can read the full CPA Trade Survey here.
