Regional Construction Hotspots in Great Britain

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. The award of contracts for works under the AMP8 regulated period for water & sewerage projects, as well as contracts for energy generation and grid connections work and contracts for major projects such as stations for HS2 will undoubtedly have driven the strength of infrastructure.

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. In this year’s report, single-sector hotspots in residential, commercial or infrastructure were most common, although there were several reporting hotspots in two sectors of construction. Encouragingly, regions with single or double hotspots were spread across Great Britain. Moreover, hotspots continued to outnumber coldspots in all regions of Great Britain. Regions registering the most hotspots were the North West, the South East and Scotland.

Given the varying nature in the size of construction projects, construction hotspots may also show due to a single large project in one sector (see table below). Although these may be viewed as skewing results, they still represent a significant driver of regional growth and activity and were a key driver of hotspots throughout the country. There was also a broader spread of construction sectors in the top ten largest contract awards in this year’s report – 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.

In smaller sub-regions, single, large offices, retail and residential projects can also generate hotspots: three small housing developments in Eastbourne, Hailsham and Frant drove East Sussex CC to be a residential hotspot in 2025, for example.

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.