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1180 Elliott Court Coventry Business Park, Herald Avenue Coventry CV5 6UB Tel: 02476 854980
info@bmf.org.uk www.bmf.org.uk
Your views on the Apprenticeship Levy
It is four years since the Apprenticeship Levy idea first emerged and it is not working properly. Many employers were unable to spend their allowance in the first year. The BMF is not alone in airing concern. Whitehall budgets will be overspent by £½ billion this year and £1½ billion by 2021-2022. Ministers will have to choose between allocating more funds, curtailing some apprenticeships or reducing public funding for certain apprentices. We invite views on changes you think could help you. Ideas we are canvassing are: • holding a firm line that the Levy pays for apprentices only
• extending how long you have to spend contributions from 2 years to 3 or more.
• training for older employees • helping the unemployed back into work
Please send your views to Richard Ellithorne at richard.ellithorne@
bmf.org.uk or Brett Amphlett at
brett.amphlett@
bmf.org.uk.
Bobby Davro to host auction at BMF Members’ Conference
Bobby Davro, the comedian, actor and TV personality, will host a charity auction at the BMF Awards Dinner, part of the BMF’s annual Members’ Day Conference. The Awards Dinner auction will raise money to be shared between the BMF’s charity of the year, Variety – the Children’s Charity, and Samaritans.
He will also present the prizes for the BMF annual Golf Tournament and to the winners of the Five-a-Side Football match.
BMBI listed as data source by Department for
Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy The latest Monthly Construction Update from the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (BEIS) features data from the Builders Merchant Building Index (BMBI), a brand of the BMF. It’s a milestone for BMBI, achieving one of its main objectives in becoming a recognised index for construction by Government, economists, business and the media. The BMBI is a comprehensive analysis of merchant market performance from July 2014 to April 2019 coupled with an analysis of the key factors affecting builders’ merchants’ sales to project future sales from May 2019 to December 2021. It is the most reliable source of data for the UK repair, maintenance and improvement market, being based on actual sales
BMBI
at UK Builders Merchants Figures for Q2 2019 released in the BMF’s Builders Merchants Building Index (BMBI) report the first negative growth in sales through UK builders’ merchants since data collection began in 2014. In value terms, total merchant sales for the Q2 2019 were down -1.2% against the same period last year. The negative figures were exacerbated by poor trading in June when sales were down by -8.1% year on year, albeit with one less trading day in June 2019. A comparison of average sales per day saw a small Q2 increase of 0.4% over the same period last year.
Sales of Heavy Building Materials (the largest category) declined by -1.6%, with the next largest category Timber & Joinery also showing a slight decline at -0.1%. Plumbing, Heating & Electrical product sales fell by -3.6%, while Kitchens & Bathrooms was down -1.3%. Landscaping products, sales of which normally rise significantly during the second quarter, was the best performing category, rising by 1.2%. Performance figures for the first six months of 2019 against 2018 continue to show value growth, but this has slowed to +2.1%, with value inflation the likely driver
September 2019
www.buildersmerchantsjournal.net
data from GFK’s Builders Merchants Panel, which analyses sales by value from over 80% of the country’s generalist builders’ merchants.
Mike Rigby, CEO of MRA Marketing, one of the founders of the BMBI, says: “With growing interest by the media, this latest development is extending our reach and potential to influence.”
To download the latest BEIS Monthly Construction Update, latest reports, Expert comments and videos, visit
www.bmbi.co.uk.
The BMF welcome the following new members:
Merchant
Service
rather than volume.
John Newcomb, BMF CEO, said: “This is the first quarter we have seen a year on year decline since the BMBI was launched in 2014 but we remain cautiously optimistic that it will prove to be a blip. The slowdown may be weather related, or it may reflect an unwinding in the stockpiling that boosted sales volumes in Q1. A third possibility is that people are reluctant to commit to buying or improving their homes until Brexit is resolved once and for all.” A PDF edition of the Q2 Forecast (July 2019) is now available free for members or can be purchased for £195 + VAT.
Contact Nyssa Patel at nyssa.
patel@bmf.org.uk.
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