Lavendon Group, one of Europe’s market leaders in the rental of powered access equipment, said this week that business in Europe since the beginning of 2010 has been affected by unusually prolonged bad weather.

“We have, however, seen clear improvements in activity levels from March onwards, particularly in Germany,” the company said in a statement. “In the Middle East, demand continues on an improving trend following the slowdown experienced during the second half of 2009. Group revenues, excluding ex-fleet equipment sales, for the three months ended March 31 have declined by 13 percent compared with the same period last year on both an actual and constant currency basis.”

The company said it believes it will recover from the shortfall and “meet its expectations for the full year.”

In the U.K., revenues for the first three months declined by 12 percent compared with the same period last year, with the rate of year-over-year decline lessening each month. The trend has been supported by a recovery in demand from smaller, non key-account customers that had struggled the most because of last year’s slowdown.

Revenue for Lavandon’s German business dropped 20 percent in the first quarter, especially in January and February when weather was particularly harsh. The combined revenues of France and Belgium only declined 2 percent. Spanish revenues declined 21 percent. Business downsizing has helped Lavendon recover in Spain to the breakeven point with positive cash flows.

In the Middle East, rental revenues declined 5 percent for the quarter compared with the previous year. However, demand improved, particularly in Saudi Arabia, compared with the second half of 2009.