Its like the toilet roll rush of 2020, the press report that you can't get hold of cement, every builder orders extra bags to stock up, suddenly the shelves are empty.
There certainly are shortages of some materials but I think following brexit delays at the ports are more of a problem than HS2.
In the first covid shutdown, a lot of material manufacturers either slowed down or shut down completely & furloughed their workers, building carried on, albeit slower than before & used up all the stockpiled supplies.
Theres also problems getting stuff from China. There is a worldwide shortage of available shipping containers, the backlog at Uk ports means that shipping companies don't want to ship to the uk, they would prefer to go to Rotterdam & we then have to transport by lorry back to the Uk.
Its an absolute nightmare trying to finish building projects, whatever you are doing there is bound to be something unavailable. On one project recently we just sent a few chaps out to different Ikea stores to get 120 matching light fittings as it was a safer bet than waiting for the imported stuff to turn up.
