{"id":961,"date":"2018-10-24T10:29:00","date_gmt":"2018-10-24T10:29:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/foundationpr.co.uk\/?p=961"},"modified":"2020-03-21T23:21:49","modified_gmt":"2020-03-21T23:21:49","slug":"no-brickies-and-no-bricks-how-brexit-might-affect-building-materials-supplies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/foundationpr.co.uk\/index.php\/2018\/10\/24\/no-brickies-and-no-bricks-how-brexit-might-affect-building-materials-supplies\/","title":{"rendered":"No brickies. And no bricks. How Brexit might affect building materials supplies"},"content":{"rendered":"

There is much talk about how Brexit will affect the building and construction labour market this week. But less is being said about the potential shortage of building materials, an equally concerning prospect.<\/em><\/p>\n

Last week Teresa May pledged at the Tory Conference to make it nigh on impossible for \u201cunskilled\u201d foreign workers to enter the UK. Even leaving aside the fact that these \u201cunskilled workers\u201d are vital o the UK construction industry \u2013 low skill does not necessarily equal low value to a project \u2013 and that recruiting and training British replacements will not be an overnight task, it ignores the fact that these \u201cunskilled\u201d workers may have no materials to actually build in April next year.<\/p>\n

Anyone with even a cursory knowledge of the industry knows that a woefully small amount of building materials are manufactured in the UK. In fact, over the period from Quarter 1 1984 to Quarter 2 2017, construction materials imports have increased, on average per quarter by 3.8%. That\u2019s per quarter. <\/em>The EU is by far our biggest source of building material imports. A study from the Department for Business Skills and Innovation estimated that 64% of building materials are imported from the EU. And according to a government report published this year, more than \u00a310 billion of construction materials came from the EU last year \u2013 more than three times what we import from China.<\/p>\n

Even if supply doesn\u2019t stop completely, things will surely get more expensive.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

So, should the tap be turned off, even temporarily, where will these materials come from? Some materials are already in short supply. Blocks, roofing materials and insulation materials are already scarce. And ask some of the major brick suppliers about a delivery and you will get much sucking of teeth and shaking of heads.<\/p>\n

Even if supply doesn\u2019t stop completely, things will surely get more expensive.  A weaker pound will lead to the rising costs for imports and, given the way Brexit negotiations have been going so far, the UK could lose tariff-free access to the single market, as well as facing the imposition of duties and limits on quantities.<\/p>\n

So maybe it\u2019s a good thing that we won\u2019t have any brickies on UK construction sites next year. Because there is every chance they won\u2019t have any bricks to lay.<\/p>\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There is much talk about how Brexit will affect the building and construction labour market this week. But less is being said about the potential shortage of building materials, an equally concerning prospect. Last week Teresa May pledged at the Tory Conference to make it…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1020,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-961","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/foundationpr.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/961","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/foundationpr.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/foundationpr.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foundationpr.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foundationpr.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=961"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/foundationpr.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/961\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":964,"href":"https:\/\/foundationpr.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/961\/revisions\/964"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foundationpr.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1020"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/foundationpr.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foundationpr.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foundationpr.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}