IN Brief:
- Glenigan’s April review shows starts down 6% on the previous three months and 20% on 2025 levels.
- Detailed planning approvals fell 29% over the period and 51% year on year.
- Awards improved in some sectors, but fewer projects are converting cleanly from contract stage to live site activity.
Glenigan’s latest Construction Review paints a weaker picture of the UK market, with project starts and detailed planning approvals sliding back even as some contract award figures show selective resilience across parts of housing, civils, offices, education, and hotel and leisure.
The headline numbers are stark. Starts on site over the review period fell 6% against the previous three months and finished 20% lower than 2025 levels. Detailed planning approvals dropped 29% over the period and were down 51% on the year. Main contract awards rose 30% against the preceding three months and 3% against 2025 levels, but that improvement sits against a backdrop where fewer projects are progressing through to site.
The split between awards and starts continues to define the market. Tendering activity, client commitments, and contract announcements are still producing movement in some sectors, but a smaller share of that activity is translating smoothly into mobilisation. Funding caution, delayed decisions, regulatory pressure, and a less forgiving cost environment are all slowing the point at which work becomes visible on the ground.
Glenigan’s sector breakdown shows that weakness is not evenly distributed. Offices, hotel and leisure, and education recorded stronger year-on-year starts, while housing and civils showed some improvement in main contract awards. Data centre development and public-sector programmes continue to support sections of the market, and schools work remains one of the more dependable building streams. Even so, the broader picture remains uneven, especially where private investment and consumer confidence are still subdued.
The approvals data is particularly sobering because it speaks to what comes next. Detailed planning approvals form the forward edge of the market. When they decline on this scale, future starts become harder to sustain without stronger financing conditions, policy support, or a more decisive shift in investor appetite. In that environment, the sector becomes increasingly dependent on schemes that are already well advanced or backed by public funding.
That concentration is already visible. Education, selected office-led projects, social housing interventions, and civils packages are still generating meaningful work, but they are carrying a greater share of total activity while private residential and speculative commercial development remain under pressure. The result is a market where certain segments remain busy while the wider base continues to soften.
Contractors are still contending with the same set of conversion pressures that have defined the past year: financing costs, skills constraints, energy exposure, regulatory complexity, and a more cautious supply chain. Winning work is one stage of the process. Starting it on acceptable terms remains the harder test. That gap explains why awards data can look more encouraging than site activity feels.
The April review does not point to collapse, but it does suggest that any recovery remains fragile and selective. There are active sectors and there are live schemes, yet the overall shape of the market still depends heavily on a relatively narrow group of stronger segments supporting a much weaker base underneath. Until starts and approvals recover together, confidence is likely to remain cautious.