Ken Parkin, the chair of the Construction Alliance North East (CAN) and Matthew Wharton, the director of Wharton Construction, have released a statement addressing the rising prices the industry could see due to the unstable economic changes caused by the pandemic, Brexit and the ongoing invasion in Ukraine.
The turbulent economic factors have led to an increase in cost-of-living prices, national insurance as well as unprecedented change in the level of volatility in commodity and energy prices.
An example of this is British Steel increasing the prices of Structural Sections for all new orders by £250/t, with immediate effect, representing almost a 10% overnight cost increase for CAN’s regional SME members.
To illustrate the severity of the rising prices, two relatively small projects conducted by CAN’s regional SME members resulted in an immediate cost increase of circa £20,000 per project, with the member company currently unable to pass this on to clients due to fixed price contracts.
Ken and Matthew are now calling on the government to provide as much support as possible to regional SMEs, as well as for clients, material suppliers and merchants to share the risk with both main and sub-contractors.
>>Read more about supply chain issues here.
