IN Brief:
- OHOB Holdings reported £294m turnover and £25.1m pre-tax profit for the year to March 2026.
- Operating margin rose to 6.5%, while the group ended the year with £91m cash and no bank borrowing.
- Improving Gateway 2 performance could help delayed higher-risk residential schemes convert into construction workload.
O’Halloran & O’Brien increased pre-tax profit to £25.1 million in the year to March 2026 despite parent company OHOB Holdings recording a 20% fall in turnover to £294 million as delayed higher-rise residential work continued to suppress activity.
Pre-tax profit rose 15% from £21.8 million, while operating margin strengthened from 5.2% to 6.5%. Directors attributed part of the improvement to successful final-account settlements, producing a result in which lower revenue was accompanied by stronger profitability rather than a simple deterioration in trading.
Construction contracting generated £271 million of revenue, plant hire contributed £4.6 million, and residential property sales were close to £18 million. The group ended the year with £91 million in cash, no bank borrowing, and an average workforce of 200, up from 184.
The accounts arrive after several years in which planning and Building Safety Act approval delays have held back tall residential projects. That exposure is particularly relevant to OHOB because its core groundworks and reinforced-concrete frame packages sit close to the front of the physical programme and therefore depend on client approvals converting into reliable start dates.
Regulatory delays reach the specialist supply chain
When a higher-risk residential project remains in pre-construction, the effect travels quickly into packages that would normally mobilise first. Labour, plant, temporary works, excavation, piling interfaces, drainage, substructures, and frame resources can all be provisionally planned without producing revenue until a scheme has the approvals and design information needed to start.
The latest Building Safety Regulator data gives some support to expectations that the backlog is easing. For the 12 weeks to 1 August, new higher-risk buildings and conversions recorded a 91% Gateway 2 approval rate and median approval time of 22 weeks, compared with 39% and 43 weeks respectively a year earlier.
That is a substantial improvement, but 22 weeks remains a meaningful period in a contractor’s workload plan. At 1 August, 131 new higher-risk building and conversion cases were still in progress, alongside 330 external-remediation cases and further applications covering internal works, NHS buildings, and transitional projects.
Developers and main contractors therefore still need approval programmes that reflect design maturity and regulatory lead times rather than provisional site dates. A groundworks contractor cannot resolve incomplete Gateway information after mobilisation, and holding labour or plant against repeatedly moving starts creates cost without productive output.
OHOB’s service mix gives it some protection from that concentration. The business works across groundworks, concrete frames, infrastructure, data centres, cut-and-carve projects, and other civil engineering activity, while the wider group includes plant hire, utilities, and residential development operations.
Cash provides room to choose workload
The £91 million year-end cash balance and absence of bank borrowing give the group substantial working-capital headroom while project starts remain uneven. That position can reduce pressure to replace delayed work immediately with lower-margin contracts simply to keep turnover moving, although individual project terms will determine the quality of future earnings.
OHOB has also expanded geographically beyond its historic concentration in London and the South East into the Shires, Midlands, North, and South West. A broader regional footprint creates more routes into infrastructure, data-centre, and residential work while reducing dependence on one planning and development cycle.
During the year, the group launched Parklife Partnerships to identify sites, secure funding, and deliver urban residential schemes through development partnerships. Moving closer to development decisions can provide earlier visibility of land, funding, design, and approval risk, although it also exposes the group more directly to the economics determining whether a scheme proceeds.
The improved 6.5% operating margin needs to be read with some caution because successful final-account settlements contributed to the result. Settlements can release value from work completed in earlier periods, so the margin should not automatically be treated as the level that current projects will reproduce.
Even so, profitability of £25.1 million on lower turnover leaves OHOB entering the next period from a strong balance-sheet position. Average staff numbers increased rather than contracted, indicating that the group retained capacity while delayed projects worked through planning and regulatory processes.
The Building Safety Regulator’s improving approval figures are commercially relevant because more predictable Gateway 2 determination allows specialist contractors to plan plant, people, and procurement against firmer mobilisation dates. Faster approval does not guarantee a construction start, but it removes one source of uncertainty that has materially affected tall residential workload.
Developers still have to clear viability, funding, planning conditions, utilities, procurement, and detailed design. A cluster of schemes restarting together can also increase demand for labour and specialist subcontracting, pushing prices upwards just as clients expect delayed developments to return to their original cost assumptions.
OHOB’s latest result shows the benefit of financial headroom during that pause: lower revenue, but higher profit, a stronger margin, £91 million in cash, and no bank borrowing. The next test is more conventional — whether returning residential workload can lift turnover without surrendering the commercial discipline that made a quieter year unusually profitable.
