Spring breathes new life into the market

A spring bounce-back! It’s nice to have some good news to talk about for a change, and reasons for some cautious optimism. The latest CPA/Barbour ABI Index for April, which measures contract awards, was 121, 8% higher than in March. This is partly due to spring arriving, finally, after the snow-affected March, but the rise in the index does represent some much needed growth.

Unless you were working in London (which is a completely different market to the rest of the country), last year and the first quarter of this year were very difficult. Construction output fell 8% last year and a further 2.4% in Q1 but in London output rose more than 3%.

But April’s index illustrates growth in housing, education, offices, retail and hotels.

Of course it is far too early to be calling any sort of sustained recovery in construction but at least it indicates that Q2 should be better than Q1.