Construction picked up in UK last month: Report

Last month was a good time for Britain's construction firms as activity  picked up with sunny weather conditions and growing confidence among clients led to faster creation and bolstered hopes the wider UK economy may be able to avoid recession.

Further to the unexpectedly upbeat news from the larger manufacturing survey on Monday, a closely followed construction survey saw activity at a 21-month high for March, providing added evidence of a slow recovery in one of the sectors that helped push Britain's economy into negative territory at the end of last year.

The report goes well with other business surveys, suggesting that even as the UK economy shrank at the end of last year, activity and confidence had picked up slowly in recent months.

Another separate report from the British Chambers of Commerce this morning alluded to  "a welcome but modest improvement in the economic situation".

According to David Tinsley, UK economist at BNP Paribas the latest crop of indicators, suggested that the economy did indeed post moderate growth in the first quarter, as the bank had been saying, and things looked pretty good for the second quarter as well. He added, following a wobble over the last few weeks the data-flow out of the UK appeared to be finding its feet again.

The headline reading on the Markit/CIPS UK construction PMI poll was up at 56.7, up from 54.3 in February, which was well-above the 50-mark dividing growth from contraction and higher than the 53.5 forecast by economists in a Reuters poll.