Building sites will operate until 9pm, six days a week as ministers seek to kick-start construction economy
- Housing Secretary Robert Jenrick says the economy must ‘cautiously’ reopen
- Building sites can operate until 9pm six days a week to help get it running
- Move will ease pressure on transport system and improve social distancing
- Property market also being restored as people are encouraged to go to work
- Here’s how to help people impacted by Covid-19
Building sites will operate until 9pm six days a week as ministers scramble to stop the economy disintegrating during lockdown.
Housing Secretary Robert Jenrick said extending the hours for construction would take pressure off the transport system and improve social distancing.
The move comes after Boris Johnson urged everyone in sectors of the economy that are allowed to be open to go back to work.
Amid dire forecasts that the UK faces the ‘recession to end all recessions’ due to efforts to stop the spread of the disease, the PM unveiled his ‘road map’ this week for gradually getting the country up and running again.
At the Downing Street briefing this evening, Mr Jenrick said it was important that the government ‘cautiously restarts aspects of the economy’.
Councils have been told to allow construction sites to operate until 9pm, six days a week, even in residential areas, unless there are ‘compelling reasons’ otherwise
At the Downing Street briefing this evening, Robert Jenrick said it was important that the government ‘cautiously restarts aspects of the economy’
He has also announced that the property market will be allowed to resume for the first time since March 26.
An estimated 450,000 buyers and renters, whose moves were stalled, have now been released from limbo.
Estate agents, surveyors and conveyancers have been told they can reopen – although they are urged to make use of ‘virtual viewings’ online wherever possible.
Removal men have been issued with new safety guidance, including being told to wear gloves and face masks.
Councils have been told to allow construction sites to operate until 9pm, six days a week, even in residential areas, unless there are ‘compelling reasons’ otherwise.
Mr Jenrick said: ‘Varied start and finish times will make it much easier for sites to observe social distancing, take the pressure off public transport like the Tube in London and keep Britain building.’
The scale of the threat to the UK was underlined today as the respected IFS think-tank said the scale of the nose-dive due to coronavirus lockdown will be like nothing seen before.
Director Paul Johnson said the scale of the downturn was huge. ‘It is a mega-recession. It is a recession to end all recessions, in terms of its scale,’ he told BBC Radio 4’s World at One.
‘It’s just a very different kind of one to ones we have had in the past because it is resulted from a different thing, a pandemic. It has resulted from a different response, government closing part of the economy down.
‘And it should result in a different route out and we hope a faster route out. But we cannot know that it will be a faster route out.’
Meanwhile, the NIESR forecast that UK plc will shrink by 25-30 per cent in the current three month period.
Even its optimistic estimate suggested that the economy will not reach pre-crisis levels until the end of 2021.
The NIESR forecast and Bank of England scenario both show easily the biggest dip in quarterly GDP since figures started being recorded in their modern form
The dire assessments came after official statistics this morning showed GDP was down 2 per cent in the first quarter of 2020 and plunged 5.8 per cent in March – the largest monthly fall on record.
But although the three-month fall was the worst since the end of 2008 at the height of the credit crunch, it is just the tip of the iceberg as it includes just one week of the full lockdown.
The NIESR figures are in line with the scenario from the Bank of England that GDP will slump by 25 per cent this quarter before bouncing back. The 14 per cent over the year would be the worst recession in 300 years, since the Great Frost swept Europe in 1709.
Meanwhile, former chancellor Lord Lamont said much of the economy cannot recover until social distancing ends.
‘There are whole sectors of the economy – hospitality accounting for 10 per cent of the labour force, airlines, transport – that simply cannot operate with social distancing profitability,’ he told the House of Lords today.