If we had to imagine what issue would be furthest from the minds of small building firms, including single person businesses, whose views and feelings are so well articulated by my fellow Building columnist John Smith, it would be which government department and which minister should sponsor construction. Large firms such as Willmott Dixon do have concerns about such matters, because so much of our work is public sector-related - and many small firms do work with them as highly valued subcontractors and suppliers. That is why we should be concerned about the level of co-ordination by government over the workload of an industry that is likely to have topped ￡100bn for the first time in 2004 and accounts for about 7.5 to 8.5% of GDP.
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