In Quarter 1 2024, market activity was somewhat subdued with house building remaining at similarly low levels to Q3 and Q4 2023. The delayed General Election decision and a lack of direct support for housing in the Spring Budget is further delaying major projects from taking off.

At Polypipe, we are keen to ensure that plastic, as a building material, is fully understood in terms of its sustainability and usability benefits over legacy materials. Plastic, the material, often gets a bad rap, mainly due to its association with single-use plastics and their association with inadequate disposal and recycling processes. However, rigid plastic can in fact be a more sustainable offering than legacy and alternative materials. As a building material, rigid, engineered plastics are very long lasting and have been proven to be capable of being recycled many times over without noticeable loss of functional integrity or performance.

One of the endless on-site debates within the residential plumbing industry is plastic versus copper. As a plumbing material, plastic offers improved health and safety due to the lack of hot works, much greater innovation in installer-friendly technology, as well as the reusability of fittings, and a greatly reduced risk of theft. Ease of installation, using push-fit plastics, often translates into heavily reduced time and cost on site. Polypipe Building Products has recently relaunched the PolyPlumb range of plastic plumbing with new PolyPlumb Enhanced, now in both grey and white.

Polypipe Building Products has the widest and deepest range of kitemarked and certified products in the UK plumbing and drainage market – and we are passionate about quality. We’re also currently building our portfolio of Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) and working towards the Code for Construction Products Information (CCPI) to meet and exceed data requirements for our customers now and in the future. The building industry is increasingly demanding more and better data from its manufacturers, which ultimately leads to better visibility to ensure building safety and performance. Recently we achieved gold standard with the Supply Chain Sustainability School, the highest level of accreditation, to demonstrate our dedication and work towards our sustainability and decarbonisation targets.