But the losses are reducing as the European arm was in the red by £7.65m between January and March from revenue of £565m compared to a loss of £66m in the same quarter last year.

The European operating division includes the UK, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Czech Republic and Hungary.

Skanska chiefs also downgraded their 12-month forecasts for the UK non-residential building market due to Brexit delays on investment decisions.

The number of construction employees across the whole group fell to 34,351 from 37,862 in the same quarter last year.

Skanska President and CEO Anders Danielsson said: “In Construction, the improvement in profitability that we started to see by the end of last year is continuing.

“We expect the recovery to be gradual over the coming years. We are executing on our strategic initiatives and completing a number of projects with low profitability, and refilling the backlog with new projects.

“The profitability improvement is mainly expected to come from Poland and the USA, with continued strong performance in the Nordics.”