Scottish builders’ confidence holds steady

A quarterly survey of the membership of industry trade association the Scottish Building Federation has revealed that confidence held steady at plus 2 during the last three months of 2016, the same level recorded during the previous quarter.

This is the second consecutive quarter during which the Scottish Construction Monitor showed overall confidence of the industry has been rated positive after a slump in confidence to minus 19 at the end of June, immediately following the UK referendum vote to leave the European Union.

Scottish Building Federation managing director, Vaughan Hart, said: “Overall, construction employers are continuing to feel cautiously optimistic about the outlook for their businesses over the next 12 months, reflecting a more general feeling of very cautious optimism about the outlook for the Scottish economy in 2017. But I think that sentiment is very finely balanced and there is equally a lot of uncertainty about how the construction sector and the economy as a whole will actually perform next year. For this reason, the industry’s overall confidence rating remains only marginally positive this quarter.”