If you’ve been following Advantage’s recent blogs, you’ll know that we’ve been writing about the housing boom that’s been seen in many parts of the UK. This month, we’re happy to note that rising housebuilding rates have driven the fastest rise in construction output that we’ve seen so far this year.

According to the latest IHS Markit/CIPS the output has increased for the first time in April despite a dip in activity in both the commercial and civil engineering sectors.

The IHS Markit/CIPS UK Construction total activity index posted above the neutral 50.0 thresholds for the first time since January sitting at 50.5 in April, up from 49.7 in March.

As reported by Building: Mark Robinson, Scape Group chief executive, said while he was pleased construction output rose for the first time this year, it was obvious that “the residential sector is propping up an otherwise stagnant market”.

He said:

“At the same time we must make sure that the pace at which we are building new houses is not impacting on the quality of those homes. Consumer confidence in the housing sector has been knocked while the industry strives to meet government targets.”

The latest update came on the same day as RICS’ latest UK Construction & Infrastructure Market Survey, which found private housing workloads were comfortably in positive territory, with a net balance of +21% of survey respondents reporting a rise in activity, up from +20% in the last three months of 2018.

You may also enjoy our recent blog on how and why salaries in construction are on the rise this year.

Thank you for reading. We’ll be back soon with more news and views from the Advantage team. Also, if you’d like to read about what we’ve been up to in recent months, here’s our blog on a few Advantage highlights from the past six months.