Regional Construction Hotspots in Great Britain 2025

The Regional Construction Hotspots in Great Britain report, made in partnership between the Construction Products Association (CPA) and Barbour ABI, analyses construction contract awards at a high level of regional granularity, firstly to identify regions where values are higher or lower than the long-term average – hotspots and coldspots – and secondly, to offer a forward-looking indication of growth by region and by sector. New data reflects on the hotspots and coldspots in 2025.

One of the challenges in using such granular data is the large lags in reporting of official output data; ONS data for regional construction activity in 2024 was not yet published at the time of writing. So, by using Barbour ABI’s data on contract awards in 2025, this aims to highlight construction work ahead, rather than reporting on activity in past periods that may not be relevant.

It is important to note that the economic backdrop will be a major driver and influence on contract awards – from delays in tendering due to cost rises or project adjustments, hesitancy to proceed when financing costs have increased, to large projects initially approved three to five years ago now reaching go-ahead and contract award. 

Hotspots and coldspots seek to identify regions where contract awards in 2025 were significantly above or below previous years, signposting pockets of activity or a contraction in construction activity over the near-term horizon. Some regions of the country host more construction activity than others. Manchester and Lewisham and Southwark were in the top 10 largest regions in terms of the value of contracts awarded in 2025. However, the value of contracts awarded in these two regions was lower than in the previous year, so whilst they will provide a large source of construction work, they are not hotspot regions.

There are clear hotspots for upcoming construction activity over the next 6–24 months in Great Britain, with hotspots outnumbering coldspots by five-to-one overall and sixteen-to-one for infrastructure, which continues the trend of infrastructure driving hotspot activity seen in previous reports.

Again, as in previous years, there were no broad hotspots in 2025 – where contract awards in each of the three main construction sectors of residential, commercial and infrastructure, were significantly above the long-term average.

There was also a broader spread of construction sectors in the top ten largest contract awards in this year’s report. This included Tata Steel’s electric arc furnace in Port Talbot (industrial sector), Saunderton data centre near High Wycombe, which has an overall project value of £1.0 billion, and two new hospitals – Monklands in Airdrie and Cambridge Children’s Hospital.

Construction coldspots featured only lightly across Great Britain. There were no coldspots in Yorkshire and the Humber or the South West and only one in the North East, the North West, the East of England and London. Coldspots were most numerous for the residential sector, which continues to highlight constraints on both the demand and supply side: confidence, deposit affordability and the affordability of mortgage repayments on the demand side and a rising regulatory and cost burden worsening viability on the supply side. Student accommodation – either private purpose-built or on-campus – retirement or care home facilities and military single living accommodation (SLA) often featured in the top ten largest residential contract awards across the regions.

CPA has published the full report online.

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