Coronavirus Market Update – 5th June 2020

The latest Glenigan Index shows the dramatic impact that lockdown had on the industry with project starts slipping in March, before plummeting in April and May. However, early indications of post-lockdown activity are a lot more positive, and we anticipate that project starts will start to recover from June.

More optimistic news is that even more projects have now started back on-site. The number of reopened sites has continued to rise this week, with work restarting on a further 391 sites. Which means that 56% of initially suspended sites have now restarted.

While many sites in England and Wales have reopened, a high proportion of sites in Northern Ireland and Scotland remain closed. However, this week we’ve seen a further 19% of suspended sites in Northern Ireland reopen and almost a third of suspended sites in the Province have now restarted. We expect to see sites in Scotland start to reopen as their lockdown is eased from the 15^th June.

And it’s not just on-site activity that gives us hope, but the planning pipeline has been healthy too. Planning decisions have slipped back by just 12% since the lockdown came into force and 1,225 planning decisions a day have been made this week. This is a welcome indicator that there is a potentially growing pipeline of planned projects as the lockdown is eased further in the weeks ahead.

So, it’s been another encouraging week for the industry -  and although market conditions will remain extremely challenging and volatile – there are emerging opportunities to take advantage of if you know where to look.

With that in mind, if you’d like to discuss how we can help you to safeguard your sales pipeline going forward, then please do get in touch.