Housing, offices to the fore

New construction orders were worth £11.1bn in value terms in the three months to November 2006, according to the latest data from the Department of Trade & Industry.

That represents a steady 2% improvement compared with the same period a year ago, but a disappointing 14% fall against the previous three months.
This mostly positive picture is echoed in the volume data: the three months to November being 2% better than the same period a year ago, but 8% worse than the  previous three months.

In the year to November, new orders were worth £47.9bn in value, representing a 10% improvement over the same period a year ago. The volume increase was  8%.

The public housing and private commercial sectors remained the key drivers for new orders growth.

In value terms, public housing orders improved in all three measures: the £662m generated in the three months to November was 18% better than the previous three months and 32% better than the same three months a year ago, while the £2.7bn total generated in the year to November was fully 43% better than the same period the year before.

Volume growth across those three comparisons was equally strong: 11%, 37% and 46% respectively.

The private commercial sector, while not looking that good compared with the previous three months (25% down in value and 21% down in volume), improved considerably compared with last year, mostly thanks to orders for offices.

Private commercial orders were 4% up in value and 9% better in volume compared with the three months to November a year ago, while value and volume were 34% and 35% better.

The private industrial sector remained buoyant, up 21% in value and 19% in volume in the year to November.

Private housing showed just a 1% boost in value in the year to November, but volume actually fell 4% in the same period.

The infrastructure and other public sectors continued to make for grim reading: their comparative figures resembling a sea of red. Of the 15 subsectors within these two sectors, just four showed an improvement year-on-year.