Commenting on the figures, Tom Hall, Chief Economist at Barbour ABI and AMA Research said: “After a weak recovery over the second half of 2020 and the beginning of 2021, March saw a definite improvement across the planning environment. Importantly increases were seen in the commercially sensitive sectors of hotel and leisure in contract awards, and residential and commercial in planning approvals.

However, this is only one month of improvement and the planning environment is notoriously volatile. The catch-up of ‘lost’ contract awards since the start of the pandemic amounts to some £15bn of projects, or around 20-25% of the annual contract award value. We would therefore expect a significant amount of catch up over the next couple of months as the economy reopens to strengthen a currently weak construction pipeline.

All things equal this is some much-needed positive news for the sector after an exceptionally challenging 12 months.”

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