Surveyors express concern over Welsh construction

03/09/2010

Surveyors in the Welsh construction industry have expressed concern over the effects that drastic public funding cuts might have on the sector.

The latest Construction Market Survey has shown that the encouraging signs at the beginning of the year have dissipated and been replaced by a decline in confidence in a potential recovery.

Workloads for Welsh surveyors remained in decline and many anticipated that the current slow rate of decline would experience a dramatic sudden fall in workloads and employment.

Forty per cent more surveyors in the second quarter than in the first expect workload to fall than rise, with forty per cent also expecting to employ fewer people in the year ahead. This figure had been just 14 per cent in first quarter and rose to 54 per cent.

Chief areas of concern among the construction industry professionals included lack of development finance, public spending cuts and insufficient clarity from the government on the status of existing projects. Surveyors from smaller firms said they were also fearing increased competition from larger companies, who were now vying for smaller contracts, having seen their usual larger ones dry up.

In a sign of just how many people a further decline would affect, none of the surveyors polled reported problems in finding sufficiently qualified staff when needed, indicating the fierce competition that is being generated by the downturn.