Anyone seen a builder?
Wednesday, 5 November 2008
Ross Clark
When the economy sneezes, goes the old adage, the construction industry catches a cold. And with the economy going down with double pneumonia, there should in theory never have been a better time to hire a builder. It is easy to imagine that there are scores of them sitting at home, twiddling their thumbs and waiting for a call from the few Britons who aren't fearful for their jobs, or haven't seen their investments plummet in value, and are brazen enough to go ahead with their loft extension.
That is not the experience of Stephen Donald, who runs an architectural practice bearing his name in Clerkenwell, central London. There is a longer wait for a decent builder now than at any point in the past decade, he says. "Over the past 10 years we have worked with five or six preferred building contractors, one of whom has tended to be available when necessary," he says, "but over the past six months it has proved slightly more difficult to fit in with their increasingly busy schedules."
Nor is it necessarily any easier for homeowners with small jobs to do. Sarah Archer, who lives in Stockwell, south London, just wants someone to come and repair the flashing on her roof. "I telephoned three builders who had been recommended to me, and two of them never even rang back," she says. "The third did come round and hopefully will do the job over the next couple of weeks." A fourth builder, whom she had previously used on her house, didn't even bother responding to her e-mail - "and yet I happen to know he is in financial difficulties."
Such problems seem paradoxical because there is much evidence to suggest the construction industry is slowing down markedly, with volume housebuilders mothballing building sites and laying off thousands of construction workers: according to one housing industry source, one-third of the estimated 300,000 workers employed in the construction industry a year ago have lost their jobs. Work on what would have been Britain's tallest apartment block was recently halted in Leeds. According to the department for communities and local government, the number of new homes being built in England has plummeted from 42,760 in the second quarter of 2007 to 34,350 in the corresponding period this year.
In some areas, this has resulted in a marked increase in the availability of builders. James Laing, a partner at estate agents Strutt & Parker who lives near Newbury in Berkshire, says he found a builder to undertake a small, £5,000 job within three weeks. Lucy Regan, who runs the sales service department at estate agents John D Wood - helping find builders to undertake small, mostly decorative jobs in order to prepare houses for sale - says she has found her job a little easier over the past few months.
"Chelsea seems to be the easiest place for us to find tradesmen at the moment - easier than Surrey, for example," she says. "One decorator we use has just had two huge jobs fall through, one a basement conversion and another involving the remodelling of a flat. That left him with 15 contractors on Monday morning with no work to do."
There is one drawback, however: this surplus of 100,000 builders waiting desperately for a call inviting them to put up your living room extension may be illusory. Many are foreign workers who have responded to the fall in work by returning home.
Krystyna Iglicka, an economic adviser to the Polish government, has estimated that one in three of the 1.2m Poles believed to have been working in Britain and Ireland will have returned home. This is partly due to declining job opportunities here, but also because there is more work back home - and it pays better, thanks in part to the strength of the Polish zloty against the pound.
One Pole with a particular interest in the labour market is Blaze Stojanovski. As a developer of prime property in west London, he has been a great employer of eastern Europeans since Poland and the other ex-Soviet bloc countries joined the EU in 2004. "It is much easier to employ unskilled labourers than it was a year ago," he says. "You don't have to look for them: they come to building sites looking for work. A few months ago I had a group of workers asking for £50 a day; last week they turned up again offering their services for £40 a day. But these are unskilled workers, a lot of them Bul-garians and Romanians. They will dig holes for you and mix cement, but they can't put up a cupboard."
The problem, he says, lies in finding more skilled tradesmen, such as electricians and plumbers. "A lot of them have left and they are very difficult to replace," he says. "The biggest difficulty is finding plasterers capable of doing cornicing. You need to book them six to eight weeks ahead. You can't hurry them through their tea breaks because they will just walk off site."
And it is these skilled tradesmen with whom ordinary homeowners are most likely to come into direct contact. Builders who specialise in domestic work are still relatively in demand, as homeowners unable or unwilling to move house choose to improve their existing property instead.
Donald says that his practice has received 100 inquiries from homeowners in the Clerkenwell area since the beginning of July, and that 25 of them have progressed to the design and planning stage - which compares well with the height of the boom. Moreover, a lot of labour is still tied up on projects planned before the economic down-turn: however dire their finances, homeowners are not easily going to abandon the plans for their new dining room when the walls are built but the roof has yet to go on.
In the longer term, the recession could have a dire effect on the availability of builders. In the recession of the early 1990s, half a million workers were lost in the construction industry over a couple of years. "We ended up with a skills shortage when the economy picked up," says Steve Turner, head of media relations at the Home Builders Federation. "At some point we are going to come out of the recession, and find we have still got 3m houses to build by 2020."
A warning, perhaps, to scrape the pennies together and get your ballroom built now, while the going is still - relatively - good.
Can they fix it?
Ask friends and family for recommendations, or log on to www.findabuilder.co.uk. Get at least three quotes and ask for references. Steer clear of anyone unwilling to show previous work, or who suggests you can avoid Vat by paying in cash, or who gives a remarkably low quote. You should also be suspicious if they can start work immediately. Most good builders are in demand.
..................
Timeonline
When the economy sneezes, goes the old adage, the construction industry catches a cold. And with the economy going down with double pneumonia, there should in theory never have been a better time to hire a builder. It is easy to imagine that there are scores of them sitting at home, twiddling their thumbs and waiting for a call from the few Britons who aren't fearful for their jobs, or haven't seen their investments plummet in value, and are brazen enough to go ahead with their loft extension.
That is not the experience of Stephen Donald, who runs an architectural practice bearing his name in Clerkenwell, central London. There is a longer wait for a decent builder now than at any point in the past decade, he says. "Over the past 10 years we have worked with five or six preferred building contractors, one of whom has tended to be available when necessary," he says, "but over the past six months it has proved slightly more difficult to fit in with their increasingly busy schedules."
Nor is it necessarily any easier for homeowners with small jobs to do. Sarah Archer, who lives in Stockwell, south London, just wants someone to come and repair the flashing on her roof. "I telephoned three builders who had been recommended to me, and two of them never even rang back," she says. "The third did come round and hopefully will do the job over the next couple of weeks." A fourth builder, whom she had previously used on her house, didn't even bother responding to her e-mail - "and yet I happen to know he is in financial difficulties."
Such problems seem paradoxical because there is much evidence to suggest the construction industry is slowing down markedly, with volume housebuilders mothballing building sites and laying off thousands of construction workers: according to one housing industry source, one-third of the estimated 300,000 workers employed in the construction industry a year ago have lost their jobs. Work on what would have been Britain's tallest apartment block was recently halted in Leeds. According to the department for communities and local government, the number of new homes being built in England has plummeted from 42,760 in the second quarter of 2007 to 34,350 in the corresponding period this year.
In some areas, this has resulted in a marked increase in the availability of builders. James Laing, a partner at estate agents Strutt & Parker who lives near Newbury in Berkshire, says he found a builder to undertake a small, £5,000 job within three weeks. Lucy Regan, who runs the sales service department at estate agents John D Wood - helping find builders to undertake small, mostly decorative jobs in order to prepare houses for sale - says she has found her job a little easier over the past few months.
"Chelsea seems to be the easiest place for us to find tradesmen at the moment - easier than Surrey, for example," she says. "One decorator we use has just had two huge jobs fall through, one a basement conversion and another involving the remodelling of a flat. That left him with 15 contractors on Monday morning with no work to do."
There is one drawback, however: this surplus of 100,000 builders waiting desperately for a call inviting them to put up your living room extension may be illusory. Many are foreign workers who have responded to the fall in work by returning home.
Krystyna Iglicka, an economic adviser to the Polish government, has estimated that one in three of the 1.2m Poles believed to have been working in Britain and Ireland will have returned home. This is partly due to declining job opportunities here, but also because there is more work back home - and it pays better, thanks in part to the strength of the Polish zloty against the pound.
One Pole with a particular interest in the labour market is Blaze Stojanovski. As a developer of prime property in west London, he has been a great employer of eastern Europeans since Poland and the other ex-Soviet bloc countries joined the EU in 2004. "It is much easier to employ unskilled labourers than it was a year ago," he says. "You don't have to look for them: they come to building sites looking for work. A few months ago I had a group of workers asking for £50 a day; last week they turned up again offering their services for £40 a day. But these are unskilled workers, a lot of them Bul-garians and Romanians. They will dig holes for you and mix cement, but they can't put up a cupboard."
The problem, he says, lies in finding more skilled tradesmen, such as electricians and plumbers. "A lot of them have left and they are very difficult to replace," he says. "The biggest difficulty is finding plasterers capable of doing cornicing. You need to book them six to eight weeks ahead. You can't hurry them through their tea breaks because they will just walk off site."
And it is these skilled tradesmen with whom ordinary homeowners are most likely to come into direct contact. Builders who specialise in domestic work are still relatively in demand, as homeowners unable or unwilling to move house choose to improve their existing property instead.
Donald says that his practice has received 100 inquiries from homeowners in the Clerkenwell area since the beginning of July, and that 25 of them have progressed to the design and planning stage - which compares well with the height of the boom. Moreover, a lot of labour is still tied up on projects planned before the economic down-turn: however dire their finances, homeowners are not easily going to abandon the plans for their new dining room when the walls are built but the roof has yet to go on.
In the longer term, the recession could have a dire effect on the availability of builders. In the recession of the early 1990s, half a million workers were lost in the construction industry over a couple of years. "We ended up with a skills shortage when the economy picked up," says Steve Turner, head of media relations at the Home Builders Federation. "At some point we are going to come out of the recession, and find we have still got 3m houses to build by 2020."
A warning, perhaps, to scrape the pennies together and get your ballroom built now, while the going is still - relatively - good.
Can they fix it?
Ask friends and family for recommendations, or log on to www.findabuilder.co.uk. Get at least three quotes and ask for references. Steer clear of anyone unwilling to show previous work, or who suggests you can avoid Vat by paying in cash, or who gives a remarkably low quote. You should also be suspicious if they can start work immediately. Most good builders are in demand.
..................
Timeonline