Sluggish major project activity contributes to slower-than-expected industry recovery

Glenigan | powered by Hubexo (Glenigan), one of the construction industry’s leading insight and intelligence experts, releases the July 2025 edition of its Construction Review.

The Review focuses on the three months to the end of June 2025, covering all major (>£100m) and underlying (<£100m) projects, with all underlying figures seasonally adjusted.

It’s a report providing a detailed and comprehensive analysis of year-on-year construction data, giving built environment professionals a unique insight into sector performance over the past year.

The July Review shows an industry which, while definitely on the road to recovery, is making frustratingly slower progress than expected.

Although the sector is likely to welcome an overall uptick in projects starting on-site, rising 6% against the preceding three months and 3% against the previous year, they will be less enthused by significant dips in main contract awards and planning approvals.

This indicates that, despite the positive underlying starts on-site statistics, the sector still has a considerable journey until it’s securely back in the black, as main contract awards decreased by a quarter on 2024 figures (-24%) and by a third compared to the preceding three months (-32%). Similarly, if slightly less severe, overall planning approvals also fell by a fifth (-22%) in the three months to June, and by 3% against the previous year.

These results were largely down to an inconsistency between underlying and major project performance over Q.2.

Underlying activity (projects with a total value of under £100 million) has experienced a major boost over the previous quarter, as evidenced by the very impressive surge in project starts on-site during the three months to June (+49%) and compared with 2024 levels (+25%).

The residential vertical stood out as the clear winner, increasing 76% during Q.2, rising by almost two-thirds (+64%) compared to last year. Non-residential verticals also experienced a 21% rise against the past three months to the end of June, despite a small 3% dip compared to the same period last year.

Unfortunately, this performance was not matched in terms of contract awards and planning approvals which fell across all underlying verticals.

However, it was a general slump in major project activity that was predominantly responsible for dragging down the Review’s results across the board.

While underlying project start figures were impressively high, this wasn’t reflected in major projects which saw starts on-site, contract awards and planning approvals fall against the three months to the end of June and 2024 figures.

A key reason for this inconsistency is persistently slow economic growth and higher operational costs, which are causing a number of delayed private investment and public funding decisions, negatively affecting contract awards and planning approvals industrywide.

Looking at these mixed results, Glenigan’s Economic Director, Allan Wilen, says, “Whilst it’s fair to say that the underlying market, which makes up the majority of construction activity in the UK, is in pretty robust health, as evidenced in the last two Glenigan Indexes, recovery in the major projects stream is less stable. That’s why the figures published here are more subdued than those that appeared in Glenigan’s July Index, which only measures underlying activity.

“Of course, there will be understandable concerns around major project performance. However, before the industry starts wringing its hands in despair, it’s important to remember we’re still only weeks out from a comprehensive Spending Review which has promised a significant amount of money to kickstart a wide variety of critical infrastructure projects. These will, it’s hoped, boost major project activity in the near and long-term, bringing it on an even footing with its underlying counterpart.

“Many will be disappointed that the recovery is not being achieved at the pace expected or desired, however, momentum is picking up, which our Economics Unit predicts will only increase in the second half of this year.”

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