Contract values boosted in July

The latest contract values for July have been released by Barbour ABI in the latest edition of the Economic & Construction Market Review, showing UK construction contract awards up by 11% from July 2018.

The value of all construction contract awards in July 2019 registered at £5.1Bn based on a three-month rolling average. These figures mean July’s figures were slightly lower than June’s by 1.8%, yet the year-on-month figure were solidly higher than July 2018.

The three-month period ending July 2019 showed total construction contract awards at £15.3Bn, which is an increase of 14% on the previous quarter and 13.8% higher than for the comparable quarter ending July 2018.

Not only are values going up, by the number of contract awards also rose in July to 1,011, an increase of 38.5% on June and 3.7% higher than July 2018.

Residential held the largest share of contract awards in July at 39.9%. Commercial and retail came in second with 16.0% of contract awards, followed by the industrial sector with a share of 13.6%.

London was the contract hotspot for July and was also the location for the three largest contract awards. These include the largest contract award for the month; at £300M was the Stoney Street Commercial and Office development which is part of the Borough Yards redevelopment, Southwark. Wandsworth was the location for the second largest contract award and was Nine Elms Plots B & D – valued at £276.4M. While the third largest contract award was also in the residential sector and was the £240M fit-out contract for the Old War Office in Whitehall.

Commenting on the figures, Tom Hall, Chief Economist at Barbour ABI said: “The planning pipeline continues to defy recent negative economic news. We have seen significant activity for contact awards across the UK for the past three months, with a 13.8% increase on the comparable quarter ending July 2018. Over the next three months, we will be rolling steadily towards the Brexit deadline which may impact figures as uncertainty once again sets in.”

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