Jewson...Credit crunch closures

[MrFurious]

Two of my local jewson branches have shut down, used to work in one of them.
I guess the building trade is as bad as they say

[alexs2]

Originally Posted by MrFurious

Two of my local jewson branches have shut down, used to work in one of them.
I guess the building trade is as bad as they say

Seems to be awful at the moment....one of my kids friends was working in scaffolding,and went from more work than he wanted to no work at all in the space of 2 weeks when this all began.

[MrFurious]

Originally Posted by alexs2

Seems to be awful at the moment....one of my kids friends was working in scaffolding,and went from more work than he wanted to no work at all in the space of 2 weeks when this all began.

my uncle has his own scaffolding firm and my brother works for him, they are the same, really rushed with no fittings in and now no work to do, its hard times for lots of people.

[Baron Von Doom]

The building company i work for (Wolseley) has just closed about 200 branches across the country with the loss of about 2000 staff.

[Singh400]

Holy crap, how worse do you think it's gonna get?

[eric pisch]

Originally Posted by Singh400

Holy crap, how worse do you think it's gonna get?

ALOT worse

The banks still arnt / cant lend enough, many are in a very bad shape financially even after the government support. It would not surprise me if 70% of them end up in government ownership. What is really worrying is the speed at which the car industry is diving into oblivion, the figures from there are shocking.

As for the building industry it is and always will be hit hard in recessions (the car industry can at least try to shift production into small cheap eco cars) purely because at such a time people rarely want to or can afford to take huge financial risks, also personal projects like kitchens, extensions, loft conversions all cost alot and most people being worried about there jobs do not want to commit to a large debt.

I was a Charted Quantity Surveyor during the last recession, I realised that construction was to cyclic with boom and bust and when the opportunity to move career came up I took it, about 6 months before things got bad last time.

[razz1979]

Originally Posted by eric pisch

ALOT worse
What is really worrying is the speed at which the car industry is diving into oblivion, the figures from there are shocking.

Tell me about it. I work in the car industry, our main customers being Honda, Nissan & Jaguar

[SimonH]

Have two friends in the building trade, one at the very top of the game, basically managing multi million pound redevelopments, the other a very skilled chippy/cabinet maker who was on about £300 per day.

The first has taken a year off with his family in France and he says it would be insane to take on any projects although the land prices have dropped dramatically, and the latter has dropped his rates by over half from 6 months ago and still can't get any work.

Not good.

My next door neighbours brother works at BMW, he's worked there 8 years and he says it has never been this bad, awful sales, literally empty showrooms and no enquiries. They have even been on the phones calling old clients trying to drum up business.

[thepurser]

Sadly it is going to get worse. its a global issue and we need to stop trying to get one up on everyone else and actually implement change to address the underlying problems.

[clockworks]

If things are so bad in the building trade, why is still so difficult to find a builder to do smallish domestic jobs?

Maybe it's different in London, but a good builder willing to build a garage or small extension is hard to find in Cornwall.

[blindkiller]

Don't worry i am sure the government will bail us all out like they did the banks with our money............................................. .NOT