Small or Medium Enterprises (SMEs) construction sector has now experienced three consecutive years of declining conditions and is heading into a double dip recession as the economy falters, reveals the latest State of Trade Survey from the Federation of Master Builders (FMB).

42 percent of respondents to the FMB's Quarter Three 2010 State of Trade Survey ndicated that public new build workloads had fallen and that a further 51 percent expect them to do so again in the next three months.

Richard Diment, Director General of the FMB said: "The severe reduction in workloads for small construction companies working on public sector new build projects such as schools, hospitals and other infrastructure construction is a direct consequence of the Government’s public sector cuts. We are now moving towards a double dip recession in construction with more than half of our members anticipating falling workloads in the public sector over the coming three months. Only 9 per cent of our members expect things to improve."

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Mr Diment continued: "In some respects these dire results for the public new build sector are unsurprising given that the Government announced in July that only those schools in the Building Schools for the Future Programme that had reached financial close would go ahead. This is clearly going to have a massive impact on the construction sector and we fear that there is worse to come when the results of the Comprehensive Spending Review are announced next month."

(CD)