Construction recession on the cards, says CPA

The construction industry is expected to see a recession this year after two strong years, according to the latest Construction Products Association’s Construction Industry Forecasts. Construction output is expected to fall by 4.7% in 2023 before recovering slowly in 2024 with growth of just 0.6%.

Private housing new build, the largest construction sector, and private housing repair, maintenance, and improvement (rm&i), the third largest sector, are forecast to be the worst affected sectors this year. There is still likely to be some continued growth in infrastructure, already at historic high levels of activity, though there may be an impact from double-digit construction cost inflation.

Private housing is forecast to be the sector most affected by the downturn and fortunes for the sector over the next 12-18 months are likely to go one of two ways. The main forecast anticipates a soft landing for the housing market, which involves a sharp decline in demand during 2022 Q4 and 2023 Q1 before a recovery in demand this Spring. Even still, private housing output in 2023 is forecast to experience an 11.0% fall as housebuilders focus on completing existing developments rather than starting new sites. This fall is primarily due to rising mortgage rates, falling real wages and poor consumer confidence. Plus, there is now a less friendly government policy environment for housebuilders, given the end of Help to Buy, the Residential Property Developer Tax and the Building Safety Levy. The largest impact of the decline in demand is likely to be on property transactions, which are anticipated to fall in 2023 by around 20% whilst house prices are anticipated to decline by 8% -10%. After two consecutive years of double-digit growth, house prices will return to levels seen around a year ago. However, if demand doesn’t recover from Spring as mortgage rates continue to fall, private housing could fall even further, as is outlined in the CPA’s Lower Scenario.

Private housing rm&i output was driven to historic high levels in 2021 due to increased working from home and a ‘race for space’. With falling real wages, poor consumer confidence and double-digit construction cost inflation, many homeowners were quick to start delaying smaller, discretionary improvements work and output has been falling since March 2022. Larger improvements work, however, continued last year as households had pencilled in the finance for it at the start of 2022. Given further expected falls in real wages and increases in mortgage payments for many households this year, a further decline in private housing rm&i output of 9.0% is forecast in 2023. This will focus on a fall in larger improvements activity, before slow growth of 1.0% in 2024 as activity recovers in line with the wider UK economy. Unsurprisingly, however, one area of private housing rm&i that continues to remain strong is energy-efficiency retrofit; given homeowner concerns over energy prices, insulation and solar panel installations activity is currently buoyant.

CPA Economics Director Noble Francis says: “The construction industry has enjoyed a buoyant two years since the first national lockdown largely shuttered the industry back in Spring 2020 and activity still remains high for the moment. Overall, however, construction output is forecast to fall by 4.7% this year. It is worth keeping in mind the broader context that this is not 2008 and the decline is nowhere near the fall in output that occurred in the last recession. Looking back 15 years ago, construction output fell by 15.3% over two years during the global financial crisis.”

“Private housing and private housing rm&i, two of the three largest construction sectors, are highly dependent on the wider UK economy, interest rates, real wages and consumer confidence. So, as the UK economy falls into recession, interest rates rise, real wages fall and consumer confidence remains poor, construction output will fall sharply in these sectors. These falls will be partially offset by continued growth in infrastructure but that means that it is more important than ever that government maintains its commitments to meeting its own targets by investing in levelling up, its infrastructure pipeline and transitioning to Net Zero.”