Research shows urgent action must be taken to save jobs

The jobs, which account for about 19 per cent of the region’s total workforce in the sector, have all been shed by small and medium-sized firms (SMEs) as they battle crippling factors including late or reduced payments, difficulty in securing lending from banks, and a massive decline in workload. And yesterday, the Civil Engineering Contractors Association (CECA) North-East, which carried out the research, hit out at the “half-hearted” attempts by the Government to support the sector, and said more needed to be done urgently to halt the rapid demise of the industry amid the recession.

Douglas Kell, director of CECA North-East, said: “It’s when you add up the fallouts you realise the full damage to the sector about 2,700 jobs gone or going. Six months of half-hearted Government attempts at support, so far, have left our SME firms facing a bleak future.”

In the CECA study of the region’s companies in the civil engineering sector, carried out in April – six months after the Government detailed proposals to spur on the sector with a raft of measures – workloads were found to have dropped 87 per cent this year, with four out of ten firms describing their drop in business as being of “significant”

detriment to their operation.

The main factors in making job losses were found to be: the difficulty in getting financial support from banks; the massive rise in the costs of banking with interest rates at an all-time low; payment being harder to obtain, with late payment becoming increasingly common and a rise in disputed bills, and firms being asked by clients to accept reduced payments Mr Kell, whose CECA members span from Berwick to Whitby, said: “We urgently need an easing of financial and bureaucratic shackles holding back vital projects.”

Ross Smith, head of policy and research at the North- East Chamber of Commerce, added: “These findings really emphasise there is a real importance to take action now.”