The UK’s construction output has fallen for the first time since last January, according to US analytics giant S&P Global.

Despite healthy employment rates in the country, civil engineering and housing activity declined in July amid spiralling inflation which has hit raw materials, fuel and labour.

Gareth Belsham, director of property consultancy and surveyors Naismiths, said that “it’s hard to sugar-coat these disappointing figures.”

Falling confidence amid a gloomy economic landscape in the UK, as analysts forecast a recession to come, has “finally tipped the construction sector into contraction territory for the first time since the lockdown affected days of January 2021,” Belsham explained.