Construction industry sees improvement

Five per cent more chartered surveyors reported rising rather than falling workloads for the first quarter of 2010. This compares with a net balance of 12% reporting falls in Q4 2009. This positive turnaround reverses a decline which has stretched for seven consecutive quarters and is the first time that the net balance has turned positive since the first quarter of 2008 when it was one percent.

However, this improvement masks considerable sector variation with some surveyors reporting concerns over a lack of finance for development. The private commercial workloads net balance increased from -11 to +17 and both private housing and public housing workloads moved back into positive territory, albeit only very modestly. However, surveyors in the private industrial and infrastructure sectors reported falling workloads at -9 and -4 respectively.

Commenting Simon Rubinsohn, RICS chief economist said: "The construction sector seems to be finally lifting its head above the recession parapet but the continuing lack of development finance remains a major obstacle to a sustainable recovery with surveyors still pessimistic about future prospects. Concerns over likely cuts in public sector capital spending programmes is another factor contributing towards the cautious stance of respondents to the survey."