Featured Sector: Community and Amenity

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

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During 2011 project starts in community & amenity picked up despite an expected contraction in government capital spending, which was needed to plug the gap in public sector finances.

Community centre and library facilities have been important growth areas in recent years, while there has been come significant prison and detention facilities gaining planning approval over the past two years. However, there are big risks to these types of project going forward.

The underlying value of project starts increased by 21% over 2011, after a number of medium sized police and military projects. This figure is inflated by the comparison to an extremely poor autumn 2010, though still shows there has been an inflated flow of new work starting on site over the past year.

Previous increases in the value of planning approvals have tailed off, and we are expecting the value of construction starts to follow suit in coming months, constraining the value of new work over 2012.