Growth in public sector replacement market continues

Housing associations’ growth exceeded that of local authorities. This was due to the sharp increase in the transfer of housing stock from local authorities to housing associations in 2002/2003.

The replacement windows market grew by 5% in volume terms on the previous year.

‘The Decent Homes Standard – the target standard that all social housing is intended to reach by 2010, now looks optimistic,’ says Palmer, ‘with 34% of local authority homes failing on thermal insulation requirements, and the second most common reason for failure being the disrepair of windows. This leads us confidently to forecast continuing growth in these markets until 2008.’

Other significant points include the continued growth in the public sector replacement windows and doors against a significant fall in the private sector.

Although window frames made of softwood, aluminium and steel showed increases over the past two years, the major growth, will continue to be in PVC-U frames, with over 80% of the market.

Some more surprising conclusions were that PVC-U windows lost market share, especially in the local authority sector where Softwood grew 73%. Aluminium and steel grew significantly although from a very small base in both sectors.