The gap between construction targets and workforce capacity is widening. While construction demand continues to grow, growing gaps within labour capacity are failing to support the projected growth.

But this isn’t solely a workforce issue - it’s a systemic challenge that risks immediate project delays and missed targets. For trade businesses, the consequences are immediate and financial.

This report examines the latest construction data to reveal the regions most at risk of labour-driven project delays and examines the strategic steps that can be taken to prevent delays, from investment in training to a strategic recruitment approach.

Quick summary from DART Tool Group’s Construction Regions Risk Report:

• DART Tool Group’s ‘Construction Regions Risk Report’ analysed construction and workforce data to calculate the risk of labour-driven project delays in different British regions.
  
  
• The North of England is at the highest risk of project delays, with a 33.2% surge in project value year-on-year, but a 2.2% annual labour shortfall.
  
  
• Wales and Scotland face the highest pipeline intensity at £33,745 per working person, making their workforce the most stretched.
  
  
• The Midlands faces a stockpiling crisis with a 50.7% brick stock ratio, indicating a slowdown in building work as more materials remain in stockyards.
  
  
• Beyond the numbers, the report reinforces that avoiding labour-driven project delays requires a regional outlook and trusted tools that allow teams to meet targets.

The UK’s construction industry continues to expand, driven largely by ambitious targets and the Government’s £700 billion 10-year infrastructure strategy. In 2026, construction output is projected to increase by 2.8%, and in 2027, a further 4.2%.

This isn’t steady progress, but demand fueled by a nationwide push to modernise the UK’s energy, transport, and digital networks.

However, the construction pipeline is becoming increasingly fragile. The Government has suggested that over a quarter of a million more workers are needed to meet current construction output, let alone future projects, reflecting the need to grow and plug the holes in the workforce. 

While the industry continues to face recruitment challenges, one in three of the workforce is projected to retire by 2035, adding to the labour shortfall.

This labour crisis is particularly prevalent amongst specialist trades. The Federation of Master Builders (FMB) revealed that 61% of firms have been affected by the lack of skilled tradespeople.

While the number of projects continues to rise, the FMB also reports that the industry is struggling to cope. Nearly half (49%) of firms have experienced significant project delays, and 23% have been forced to cancel jobs due to a lack of available workers.

With a projected planned investment of £57 billion earmarked for the upcoming year in construction alone, and a hefty amount of the investment sitting in the North, regions are facing a significant amount of pressure to fulfil projects.

Without an increase in investment in future construction workers, the shrinking labour pool continues to threaten project deadlines and widen the economic gap between regions.

To identify where construction projects are most at risk of labour-driven delays in 2026, DART Tool Group analysed regional construction pipeline value, workforce capacity and recruitment pressure, and early-stage materials data across Great Britain (GB). 

To assess the likelihood of labour-driven construction delays, each region was scored out of four core pressure indicators:

• Pipeline value growth (YoY %): 
  Measures whether the value of new construction work being awarded is rising or falling, signalling future demand on labour.
   
• Pipeline intensity (£ per worker): 
  Shows the value of confirmed construction work relative to the size of the regional workforce, highlighting where labour capacity may be stretched. 
  
  
• Annual recruitment requirement (ARR %): 
  Indicates the share of the existing workforce that needs to be newly recruited each year to sustain activity at current and forecast levels.
  
  
• Brick stock vs deliveries (%):
  As a percentage, the brick stock ratio shows what share of produced bricks remain undelivered to sites at the end of the quarter. A higher percentage (50%+) can be an early warning of site slowdowns.

Each metric was scored on a 1-3 point scale (low to high risk) using the national average as a baseline, then combined into an overall regional risk score. To ensure an accurate forecast, all 2025 figures are based on Year-to-Date (YTD) comparisons against the same period in previous years.

By combining workforce and materials data with pipeline strength, this report provides an early warning of where pressure is building within the construction industry. 

Between 2025 and 2024, the value of new orders for construction has risen by 12.4% across Great Britain, with the pipeline valued at £63.34 billion for the 2025 year to date.

As the pipeline value continues to rise, the number of workers needed to complete the work is increasing. An estimated 1.8% workers are needed annually to keep pace with the growth, with the current project value equating to £23,908 per worker. And with total construction work projected to grow by 4.7% by 2027, labour-driven project delays may become more prevalent.

While this indicates a strong growth in the construction industry nationally, these figures don’t fully reflect regional variations. 

Moreover, financial pressure is returning. After a flat period in 2024, the cost of materials for ‘All work’ rose by 3% year-on-year in November 2025. The pressure was most acute in the ‘New housing sector’, where costs rose by 4.1%, creating a potentially dangerous margin squeeze for contractors. 

With materials consuming a larger share of the budget, there may be less financial room to increase wages to attract scarce talent, threatening delivery, especially in housing-led new orders. 

The North of England has been identified by DART Tool Group as the region at the highest risk of labour-driven project delays. 

While the North of England has one of the strongest year-on-year growth rates in new order value (32.2%), it also faces the highest recruitment pressure in Great Britain, with 2.2% of the current workforce needing to be replaced annually. 

This poses a significant threat to the Government's pledge to build 1.5 million homes. New housing projects account for 21.6% of the North’s construction pipeline value heading into 2026, which equates to £3.146 billion in project value. 

As a cornerstone of this national strategy, major projects in the North, like Victoria North, are starting development. The project’s vision is to build 15,000 new homes for over 40,000 people. 

However, a stark gap has emerged. While the North has seen a surge in new order value, there has been a -10.8% decline in sand and gravel sales. This discrepancy suggests that labour shortfalls could be preventing groundworks from starting on time, potentially impacting projects like Victoria North.

To ensure projects like these stay on time and deliver, the construction industry must overcome the skills shortage.

Wales and Scotland have the fastest-growing pipeline within the GB construction sector, increasing by 67.4% year-on-year to £10.85 billion. 

Unlike the housing-led North of England, this surge has been almost entirely fuelled by infrastructure work, which accounts for 42.1% of the pipeline value. Flagship projects, such as Wales’ £1.25 billion electric arc furnace and Scotland’s £1.5 billion offshore wind farm, appear to be driving this demand.

The concentration of growing high-value work has driven the region’s ‘pipeline intensity’ to a national high of £33,745 per worker, placing immense pressure on site efficiency and regional workforce capacity to absorb the expected pipeline of work.

Unlike other regions, a 7% year-on-year increase in sand and gravel sales suggests these infrastructure projects are successfully breaking ground. However, if hiring and training cannot keep pace with the scaling value of pipeline intensity, these regions could face critical skills bottlenecks by late 2026.  

These regional variations point to clear differences that are driving pressures. 

The South of England remains the UK’s largest market by value (£24.8bn), but pipeline value growth year-on-year is modest at 3.8%, significantly trailing the double-digit growth seen in the North, Wales and Scotland. 

The risk profile here is driven by sector-specific weakness. Private commercial construction is the dominant sector, accounting for 41.2% of the regional pipeline value. 

This is even more pronounced in London, where over half (52%) of primary contracts fall within the commercial and retail categories, both of which are highly sensitive to interest rates and economic uncertainty. 

With commercial value softening, the South is at a “medium risk” of project delays, with the challenge stemming from a cooling of early-stage material demand rather than labour-driven gaps.

This comes as the brick stock vs deliveries ratio sits at nearly 43%. While this currently shows a healthy balance between stock levels and brick deliveries, it is approaching the 50% tipping point where healthy stock turns into costly oversupply.  

However, combined with sand and gravel sales declining by 9% year-on-year (and down 26.5% since 2015), projects within the region could see activity cool by late 2026, as current projects complete with fewer new groundworks starting to replace them. 

The Midlands currently presents the lowest risk of project delay. However, while the rest of Great Britain is managing growth, the Midlands is the only region to see a decline in pipeline value, dropping -4.1% year-on-year. 

The region also had the weakest pipeline intensity, at £19,570 per worker, which could signal that there may not be enough confirmed work to sustain the workforce.

While the Midlands leans on infrastructure projects, accounting for 29% of its 2025 pipeline value, it is showing clear signs of stagnation. Despite confirmed projects, there is significant inventory build-up, evidenced by a national-high brick stock ratio of 50.7% - suggesting that for every two bricks manufactured, only one is being delivered to sites. 

This local stagnation is mirrored by wider government data, which revealed that national concrete deliveries crashed by 11.5% in November. The resulting stall in both brick and concrete deliveries may indicate that physical work on sites is stalling. 

For the Midlands, this creates a different risk. While labour availability is not currently a constraint, the rising level of material stock acts as an early warning of construction industry contraction in the region, which may be further exacerbated by labour shortages in the future. 

The report findings come amid a nationwide recruitment crisis in the construction industry. To sustain current output levels, the sector must recruit 47,860 new employees annually, an increase of 1.81% per year - the equivalent of 239,300 extra workers over the next five years.

The pipeline is being put under further strain as the Construction Products Association (CPA) forecasts a 1.7% increase in construction and a 3.9% increase in infrastructure output.

This comes as the training pipeline meant to deliver these recruits is fracturing. Research from DART Tool Group’s ‘Apprenticeship Gap Report’ identified a deficit of nearly 14,000 construction labour positions, with a 99:1 ratio of open roles to available apprentices. 

With average construction apprenticeship completion rates falling to just 41% in 2024/25, down from 65% the previous year, the industry is facing a bottleneck where neither recruitment nor training is currently sufficient to meet the 47,860 annual worker target. 

According to the CITB, carpenters and joiners have one of the largest workforces at 166,440. Despite this, the trade faces the highest volume of vacancies, requiring 2,280 additional recruits annually, equating to a 1.4% increase. 

However, steel erectors and metal workers need the biggest boost with an extra 2.4% annual increase in their workforce to sustain current output.

Heading into 2026, the North of England has the largest workforce shortfall, which translates directly into extended project timelines and missed completion dates. A further 12,040 recruits are needed to fulfil and deliver projects on time, with an overall increase of 2.2%. 

Despite the South having the largest workforce of 1,027,450, the region still requires a recruitment uplift of 1.1% to deliver its market-leading £24.80 billion pipeline. 

The workforce shortages aren’t just concerning numbers. When there is a smaller workforce, the risk of labour-driven work delays is greatly increased, putting both productivity and profitability on the line.

With the CPA forecasting a 4% rise in private housing output for 2026, the current labour gaps could be set to widen into critical project failures unless recruitment accelerates. 

Mitigating these risks demands smarter planning, improved training structures to meet demand, and practical on-the-job tools that help trade workers get the job done. By taking a more regional approach to workforce planning and procurement, the industry can reduce delay even in a pressured job market and an environment that is increasingly demanding.

Mitigating the risk of project delays requires a regional outlook and practical solutions, such as:

• Adopting a regional labour approach
  Labour pressures are significantly varied across the country. Aligning recruitment planning and project deadlines with the local workforce can help trade employers anticipate the impact of workforce shortages and adjust schedules accordingly.
  
  
• Investment in onsite training 
  There is a severe lack of new tradespeople entering the workforce. Offering flexible, on-site learning can help introduce younger people into the workforce. Letting apprentices and trainees practice bricklaying, welding, or carpentry while supervised can give them meaningful work while keeping the project on track.
  
  
• Partnering with local colleges and training providers
  Introduce young people to sites earlier by working with colleges, sixth forms, and training providers. Early exposure to live projects can spark interest, build practical understanding, and help boost the number of people entering the workforce.
  
  
• Provide workers with professional-grade tools
  Equipping workers with reliable, high-quality tools can help improve productivity and reduce downtime. Ensuring your workers are equipped with these tools sends a clear signal that they are valued.

With the proper kit, workers can focus on the job at hand, measuring, drilling, and setting out, without slowing projects down with inefficient or hard-to-work equipment. 

Professional-grade tools, like multi-tool blades, SDS drill bits, and holesaw sets, are designed for compatibility and optimal performance, allowing workers to work across a wide range of materials with precision. This not only improves productivity but also maintains safety and efficiency on site. 

Using official data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) and the Construction Industry Training Board (CITB), DART Tool Group analysed construction activity, workforce capacity, and materials demand across regions in Great Britain for the Year-to-Date.

The analysis focused on four key indicators:

• Construction Pipeline: Evaluated using the value of new construction orders awarded in 2025 to date, based on ONS regional and sector-level data.
• Materials Demand: Assessed using early-stage ONS data, such as sand and gravel sales and brick stock versus deliveries, to determine if projects were progressing or slowing down on site.
• Workforce Pressure: Measured using CITB employment estimates and Annual Recruitment Requirement (ARR) data, which indicates the percentage of the existing workforce that needs to be recruited annually.

Each region was scored across these indicators to assign an overall risk category (low, medium, or high). The thresholds for these categories were set using a combination of the national average and the distribution of regional results, providing a clearly interpretable grouping rather than a precise forecast.

All data is correct as of January 2026. More information is available upon request.