28th Nov 2013 14:36
LONDON (Alliance News) - Brick producers have responded to the surge in demand from new housebuilders, producing the bricks required to meet the recovery in the housing market bring driven by government schemes and an economic recovery.
Earlier this year housebuilder Redrow PLC reported a shortage of bricks and construction workers as the property market started to pick up. However, the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) Thursday said deliveries of new bricks in the six months to the end of July were up 12% on the previous year.
This came after a 12% fall in the year to March, after 3 months of cold weather slowed production.
Eight out of 10 bricks manufactured in the UK are for housebuilding, so brick production is a good barometer for the housing market and economy as a whole.
The brick industry is ramping up production after several slow years since the financial crisis in 2008, largely because of the rapid increase in construction that housebuilders say is being helped by the government?s Help to Buy scheme.
DCLG said brick makers plan to stay open over the Christmas period, when they usually close, to catch up with demand, while production in 2013 is expected to be around 1.73 billion bricks, enough to build 28 St Pancras stations.
The boom for brick makers is being replicated across the industry, with orders for all construction materials now growing at the fastest rate for 10 years, it added.
Housing Minister Kris Hopkins said Help to Buy - which enable buyers of newly built homes to receive a 20% equity guarantee from the government on top of their 5% deposit - had proved its "critics" wrong.
"Help to Buy has not only helped thousands of hard working families get on the housing ladder, it?s also laid the foundations for a recovery in housebuilding, and confounded the critics who claimed it would have no impact on the supply of new homes," he told local workers at a brick factory in Cambridge Thursday.
This was echoed by Home Builders Federation, Chairman, Stewart Baseley.
"Help to Buy is driving a big increase in house building activity. If people can buy, builders will build," he said in a statement.
"Existing sites are being built out quicker and developers are looking to start on new ones sooner. As a result there is an increased demand for labour and materials and we are seeing the supply chain respond," he added.
Baseley said the increase in house building activity had also created jobs both directly on site and indirectly in the supply chain.
By Anthony Tshibangu; [email protected]; @AnthonyAllNews
Copyright © 2013 Alliance News Limited. All Rights Reserved.
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