The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) has published a survey which shows the private sector as the principal driver of growth in construction.

The RICS UK Construction Market Survey shows 33% of survey respondents report a rise in private commercial workloads activity, with private industry seeing the strongest rise in workloads for the first quarter of 2015.

However, as workload expands, labour shortages are continuing to increase. 53% of survey respondents report that bricklayers are increasingly hard to source while 59% report the same for construction professionals (including quantity surveyors).

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Rod Shaw, an RICS Member, said: "Increasing workloads are resulting in labour shortages becoming more widespread and not just restricted to specialist contractors."

However, outward confidence for growth in the Scottish market is strong, with 63% of respondents expecting their workloads to rise over the next 12 months with a 3.75% growth in 2015.

Nonetheless, Director of RICS Sarah Spiers said: "Despite the outward optimism, there are some very real unknowns which are impacting on industry, including the general election, the UK’s relationship with Europe and skills shortages."

(LM/CD)