Public spending shores up construction industry

Public spending is now funding almost half of new home building, according to figures from the National House Building Council. The public and private sectors provided almost equal numbers of new houses (around 45 per cent each) for the three months to the end of February, compared with just a fifth of new homes that were funded by the public sector at the end of 2007. The number of new homes being registered by the private sector dropped by around 75 per cent during 2008, while public sector registrations have stayed the same.