Featured Sector: Community & Amenity

Community & Amenity Construction (£ million)
Underlying value of construction projects starting on site. (Excludes individual projects of more than £100 million and framework agreements).

This sector has been surprisingly buoyant in the face of harsh government cuts. Perhaps the full impact of fiscal austerity is yet to be felt, but it was certainly incongruous that community & amenity project starts increased 22% last year while other predominantly publicly funded sectors struggled.

However, the positive trend has now turned negative. Project starts declined over the first half of 2012. We have also tracked a decline in planned projects both at the planning approval and main contract award stages. As such, we expect a ‘correction’ over the rest of 2012 – retrenchment bringing the level of project starts back to the level seen before 2011’s anomalous increase.

Despite the overall decline, there will be opportunities ahead. There will not be many major projects worth over £100m, but there will be a number of projects worth between £10m and £30m which should support output in the sector.