Budget uncertainty hits investment but take-up of new space rises amid firms’ return-to-office mandates
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Construction of offices, shops and warehouses in the UK has fallen to the lowest level in more than a decade amid rising build costs and uncertainty.
All commercial sectors have been hit, with construction across office, retail and industrial sectors down by 21% to 5.85m sq metres (63m sq ft) in the third quarter compared with a year earlier, according to the latest data from CoStar.
This is the lowest commercial construction since 2014, and comes as housebuilding is also slowing, in a blow to the Labour government, which last year announced an ambitious target of building 1.5m new homes over five years.
