CLC committee raises concerns on material shortages 26 May, 2021 SHARE John Newcomb, CEO of the Builders Merchants Federation and Peter Caplehorn, CEO of the Construction Products Association, co-chairs of the Construction Leadership Council’s Product Availability working group have issued a statement.
Activity in the UK construction sector, already high at the start of the year, has been very robust and picked up sharply from the beginning of March. New housing and repair, maintenance and improvement (RMI), together with infrastructure, have led the way. We now also see increasingly strong performance in the commercial and industrial sub-sectors, applying further strain on the supply chain.
bags of cement in a house under construction
Supplies of bagged cement and certain electronic components are “growing areas of concern”, the Construction Leadership Council has said.
The CLC said in its latest update that product availability is worsening, as it previously warned was likely to happen. Supplies are likely to face constraints for the next six months due to strong national and global demand. Activity in the UK has increased since March, it added, with the previously subdued commercial and industrial sectors seeing workloads pick up.
A shortage of haulage drivers and increased demand from the consumer-goods sector is also making it harder to find transportation for items, the CLC said.
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600,000 employees in pub sector – 900,000 when you expand it to brewing
43% of pub staff are aged 25 or below
Builders Merchants Federation (
BMF):
760 members have a combined turnover of £38 billion, within the £156 billion total construction industry in the UK
members employ over 190,000 people in the industry
BMF merchant members operate from over 5,700 branches throughout the UK and Ireland
Quotes from employers
IKEA
IKEA, which employs more than 11,000 people across its 21 UK stores, has continued to support staff throughout the pandemic, with an extensive set of safe working procedures in place and ensuring that all workers were paid 100% of their contracted hours, regardless of the restrictions in place. IKEA supports the vaccine roll-out and ensure co-workers receive paid time off to attend vaccination appointments and makes sure the most up-to-date information is shared and available.
By Jordan Marshall2021-05-13T05:00:00+01:00
Manufacturer not taking new structural steel orders because of ‘extreme’ demand
There are concerns large-scale projects could be left in the lurch with British Steel closing its doors to new structural steel orders.
The firm said it had stopped taking new orders due to “extreme” demand, with a British Steel spokesperson confirming it had been forced to shut its order book in certain areas of the business.
Some are warning bigger jobs could now be hit because of the decision
He said: “Due to extreme high demand impacting on capacity levels, we have temporarily closed the orderbook for structural steel sections only.