Ever since the EU referendum back in late June the construction industry in the UK has been on edge to see how it would be affected by the decision to leave the EU. There have been many different reports suggesting many different outcomes regarding the construction industry but hopefully this blog will be able to clear things up.
All of the data that will be featured in this blog is from the office of national statistics, sadly they only provide statistics for the UK construction industry output up to August 2016. The statistics are laid out into three sector: new housing, other new work (which is split into infrastructure, public, private industrial, private commercial) and finally repair & maintenance.
In the month of June 2016 there was a fall in the overall revenue made in the construction industry compared to the previous month. The construction industry generated £11,155,000,000 which is £110,000,000 less than in May. As the EU referendum occurred on the 23rd June it would be hard to comment on whether it was the reason for the decrease in revenue for June 2016. This decrease was affected by a decrease in all of the sectors mentioned above (new housing, other work and repair & maintenance). This decrease could be accountable to the uncertainty of which way the vote would go.
With the vote to leave the EU made it was forecasted that the construction industry would continue to decline through the month of July, however this was not the case as the construction industry generated an extra £54,000,000, to bring the total revenue generated in July to £11,209,000,000, despite there being a further decrease in the revenue generated in the repair & maintenance sector.
Sadly, this rally of generated work was not to continue as in August 2016 there was another fall in the revenue generated by £164,000,000, which left the construction industry at £11,045,000,000. This however is still a more positive outcome than the same period twelve months previous. The construction industry in August 2015 had a loss in revenue of 302,000,000 that left it in a worse condition than what it was in August 2016.
Since the vote to leave the EU referendum there has been much concern throughout all industries but here are the official figures to show how much revenue the construction industry is generating. It is near impossible to decide if these figures are related to Brexit or just standard seasonal adjustment.
Do you think this is an accurate representation? Do you think this is the cause of Brexit or just seasonal demand? Please leave your comments below to let Fairport know what you think about the current state of the construction industry.
