Workers hit hard as building trade slips

The building industry is at risk of meltdown – and those relying on it risk losing livelihood. Nick Pritchard and Simon Penfold report

The building trade is facing a Doomsday scenario, with work on development sites grinding to a halt, jobs axed and tradesmen put on part-time hours.

Since April the two biggest housebuilders, Taylor Wimpey and Barratt, have seen a massive crash in their share prices – down 80 per cent – with increasingly damaging knock-on effects across the West Midlands.

Lack of sales and cash has forced the housebuilders into major cost-cutting measures, with around 5,000 jobs axed so far. Mark Clare, chief executive of Barratt Developments, warns that job cuts across the industry could reach 60,000 out of the 300,000 people employed directly or as sub-contractors on building sites nationwide.

Many companies like Persimmon have already announced a freeze on new building projects and there have been increasing reports of houses being left partly completed on some building estates in the region.

While firms like Wolverhampton's Carillion are booming with work in the Far East and a string of major public sector, road and rail projects, suppliers and contractors to the housebuilding trade are feeling the pinch like never before.

With orders drying up for new homes, orders are slowing to a trickle forcing firms to rationalise by laying off staff and slashing working hours.

Rightway Heating & Plumbing Merchants, of Bridgtown, Cannock, had already got its plumbers on three-day weeks and the office staff were also put on three days from this week.

Managing director Pete Mills said: "In 21 years, this is the worst I have known it. I have lost 80 per cent of my business and around 60 per cent of my staff.

"The builders are just stopping building. We had been working at four Barratt sites, including ones at Uttoxeter and Burton, but there is not a single plumber on any of them."

SPS of Cannock has had to let 50 per cent of its 70 plumbers go, with the remaining 35 taking a five-hour-a-week drop. Heatco, of Great Wyrley, has lost 80 per cent of its work, leading to the laying off of apprentices and sub-contractors, while the remaining staff and plumbers are on three days a week.

Great Wyrley business Mike Lodge Plumbing & Heating supplies sub-contractors working on most of the sites owned by the major housebuilders. Owner Mike Lodge said: "Our business has declined by a third so far this year and we are expecting more losses because our customers' workforces are declining and business is dropping off. We need the Government and the building trade to do something about it. Ministers need to help as they are laying out the building programmes."

Nick Whitfield, co-owner of Sandwell Electrical Distribution in West Bromwich, is selling up and moving to Thailand next year. He said: "We've been here 28 years but you get to the point where you just can't make money. I was doing double the turnover 25 years ago."