Construction: Small Businesses
(asked on 21st May 2025) - View Source
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask His Majesty's Government how many small and medium-sized building companies have ceased trading in the financial years (1) 2024–25, (2) 2023–24, and (3) 2022–23; and what assessment have they made of the trend of these figures.
The information requested falls under the remit of the UK Statistics Authority.
Please see the letter attached from the Acting National Statistician of the UK Statistics Authority.
Emma Rourke | Acting National Statistician
The Lord Mawson OBE
House of Lords
London
SW1A 0PW
2 June 2025
Dear Lord Mawson,
As Acting National Statistician, I am responding to your Parliamentary Question asking how many small and medium-sized building companies have ceased trading in the financial years (1) 2024–25, (2) 2023–24, and (3) 2022–23; and what assessment has been made of the trend of these figures (HL7770).
Using the quarterly business demography release[1], we can show, in Table 1, the number of businesses which were classified to the construction industry which have ceased trading in the financial years listed. Figures for building companies are not separately available so the wider aggregation of the construction industry has been used. This consists of construction of buildings, civil engineering, and specialised construction activities. These figures are classified as ‘official statistics in development’.
Table 1: Number of businesses classified to the construction industry which have ceased trading in the financial years 2022/23 – 2024/25.
Financial year | Number of business closures within the Construction industry |
2022/23 | 46,505 |
2023/24 | 40,700 |
2024/25 | 39,235 |
Source: Office for National Statistics
It is not possible to show these figures for small and medium sized enterprises only since this breakdown is not available from the quarterly release. However, figures from our 2024 UK Business: activity, size and location dataset[2] show that small and medium sized enterprises, taken to be businesses with employment less than 250, make up 99.9 per cent of businesses in the construction industry.
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) makes no estimate of the trend of these figures.
Yours sincerely,
Emma Rourke