Construction Industry problems fuel population crisis

When one of the country's biggest housebuilder's, Persimmon publicly start talking about a slowdown in house building, you can be sure that many local authorities will sit up and take notice of what amounts to them as a loss of council tax revenue.

Reasons given for not being able to meet construction include, a shortage of labour, a shortage of building materials and a slow planning process.

Compounding these reasons are the facts that increased energy costs are affecting everything that needs to be purchased and transported. Add in the rises of labour costs and you have a recipe for an explosion in the cost of housing, both new and old while demand continues to increase.

there have been shortages of building materials since the pandemic mainly because products such as cement, plasterboard, timber and steel ceased production / manufacture for the duration of world wide lockdowns. Once restrictions were lifted, what stock was left was quickly purchased. This left a huge hole in the supply chain that has yet to recover.

The impact of material shortages along with inflationary price rises places further strain on the construction industry with at least two well known firms going into administration back in May, blaming supply chain woes for their demise.

We are now seeing more bankruptcies in construction that are outstripping every other sector in the UK. According to ONS statistics, up until April nearly 400 SME's went broke, representing nearly 50% increase compared to January 2020 before the pandemic broke.

Consequently, the outlook for housing and construction in general is not good. The prospect for house prices if you are looking to buy is not good as predictions are for a heated housing market where rising costs will be passed on to buyers.One sad effect this will also have is on social housing where construction companies will not build the expected number of social housing units. 

the UK is not alone in experiencing such problems as in for instance in the USA and Canada have similar tales to tell. So this is nothing to do with Brexit as remainer would have you think.

This situation is not helped when you have large numbers of uninvited migrants travelling across the English Channel. At the time of writing, more than 10,000 known migrants, enough to fill a town the size of St Ives are being put up at taxpayers expense. More are expected.

The next time a government minister or politician tells you that they are going to build back better, or level up, or build our way out of the current crisis, don't believe it. There is some way to go to get out of this mess with more pain predicted for our economy and citizens to endure. The tragic thing thing is, this could have been avoided or at the very least, the effects mitigated.

Buckle up and tighten your belts. 

Checkout Reform UK's economic plan -  https://www.reformparty.uk/reformisessential