The Chartered Institute of Procurement & Supply stands accused of damaging the UK building materials sector with a ‘highly misleading and unhelpful’ commentary on the state of the industry.

Above: CIPS chief executive David Noble – ‘sloppy narrative’

Every month the CIPS, in conjunction with Markit Economics, produces a survey of construction industry purchasing managers to produce a growth index for the sector.

In the latest report, released earlier this week, CIPS chief executive David Noble commented: “Supply chains were weighed down by the pressures of a shortage of bricks and blocks as delivery times became longer in an attempt to fulfil recent orders from last year.”

But the Brick Development Association (BDA), representing UK brick manufacturers, said that Mr Noble had it completely wrong and hit out at his ‘sloppy narrative’.

The BDA said that brick production had risen ‘significantly’ over the last two years. Department for Business, Innovation and Skills figures released this week point to brick production in December 2015 being 16% higher than in December 2014.

The BDA challenged CIPS to produce statistical evidence to support its claim. In response, the BDA was told: “We used the term bricks as generally representative of building materials as a sector. We see a shortage of various building materials and picked on bricks as a readily understandable terminology.”

BDA chairman Michael Ankers said in response: “This is sloppy narrative that is very damaging to our industry. The BDA represents 99% of the brick manufacturers in the UK. We can report with absolute authority that there has been a significant increase in brick production over the last 12 months and this is confirmed by the latest ONS statistics.

“If there are delivery issues further down the supply chain it would be very helpful to understand the cause. Unfortunately, CIPS was unable to provide information on the number or organisation type of respondents finding bricks hard to obtain. Without that evidence, I find it astonishing that the CIPS felt authorised to comment on the availability of bricks.”

However, the CIPS subsequently defended its chief executive’s statement, saying: “Anecdotal evidence from respondents to the survey pointed to shortages in bricks and supplies, which was reflected in our commentary.”