Lord Mandelson has been sent a strong warning by Construction Products Association (CPA) chairman Adrian Barden about the state of the construction industry.
“The scale of the job losses is staggering and is ten times more than the number of jobs that it is estimated have been lost in car manufacturing, but which has attracted far more political attention,” Mr Barden wrote in the letter.
He said 60,000 jobs had already been lost in the sector by the end of 2008, with a further 9,000 subsequently announced and 12,000 on short time working. And Mr Barden warned redundancies could hit 100,000 if only half the PFI projects planned for 2009/10 were to go ahead and if only 50% of the £3bn construction industry stimulus was actually spent.
Mr Barden wrote to Lord Mandelson, secretary of state for business, following the publication of construction statistics last week which showed the largest quarterly fall in output in nearly 30 years.
