W ith John Healey’s Your First Home scheme on the way, is the mood improving in the housebuilding sector? A couple of the builders have results later this week, so can speak for themselves. In the meantime, though, here’s a thumping profits warning from Ibstock, the country’s biggest brickmaker, to spread a little more gloom. Demand hit a brick wall in the summer, as the company could have put it.

Industry data, said Ibstock , show UK brick market volumes down 17% year-on-year in July and August. For the whole of the third quarter, it said, sales were 22% below expectations, forcing a one-fifth cut in its production volumes versus plans set out as recently as August.

Cue an 11% fall in the share price to virtually its lowest level since the firm relisted on the stock market in 2015. Top-line earnings for the whole of 2026 will be “in the mid-£40m range” versus a figure close to £60m expected by the City.

The short moral from Ibstock’s woes is that the sector’s slowdown is pretty entrenched.…