Is the Treasury listening?

By Chloë McCulloch2021-02-17T06:00:00

Money invested into construction pays back several times over, that’s the message that needs to get through ahead of next month’s Budget

We knew 2020 was bad, and now we know just how bad. GDP figures tell us the economy as a whole shrank 9.9% and the biggest fall among its four subsectors was in construction, which took a 12.5% hit. While useful to know, these figures are probably not keeping construction execs up at night because what they, and no doubt everyone else, really wants to know is what is going to happen next.

In any case such stark figures mask a more nuanced picture, one where the industry rallied pretty well in the last quarter, growing 4.6% and helping the economy avoid the dreaded double-dip recession. As Simon Rawlinson at Arcadis puts it, in many ways “it’s a great story of resilience” with infrastructure and residential proving the best performers.

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