Building and trades
across the UK.

6,047 new building companies registered at Companies House in October 2026, and 74,672 over the last twelve months across the 4 trades in this family. That is about 205 a day, somewhere in the country.

Monthly figures from the 1 November 2026 register file. How the counts are made.

Building and trades · United KingdomOctober 2026
New in October
6,047
Across 4 trades in this family
Last 12 months
74,672
Nov 2025 – Oct 2026 · 6,223 a month
Share of all new companies
14.8%
74,672 of the 504,685 companies counted across all 39 trades in the last twelve months. That makes this the number 4 of the six families.
Source: Companies HouseSnapshot 1 November 2026
Nov 2025 – Oct 2026

Construction leads the family.

The 4 trades grouped into building and trades, busiest first. Construction took 58,096 of the 74,672 counted here over the last twelve months, 78% of the family on its own. Each trade opens on its own page, broken down town by town.

New UK company registrations in the building and trades family, by trade. The bar shows the twelve-month figure relative to construction, the busiest trade in the family.
Trade Oct 2026 Last 12 months Relative twelve-month volume
Construction 4,679 58,096
Electricians 542 6,686
Plumbers & HVAC 553 6,518
Landscaping 273 3,372
Building and trades, all 4 trades 6,047 74,672

The families are ours, not the register's: they exist so the colour on every chart means something. A company carrying more than one SIC code can land in more than one trade, so the rows above can count the same company twice and the family total is a total of the rows rather than a headcount of companies. The grouping is set out in full on the method page, SIC code by SIC code.

Twelve months

March was the busiest month.

New building companies registered across the UK each month. The busiest month was March on 8,372. The quietest was December on 3,943.

New building companies in the UK, by month

Nov 2025 – Oct 2026 · 74,672 in total

Previous months October 2026

Registrations dip over Christmas and pick up in the new year in almost every trade, so compare a month with the same month a year earlier rather than with the one before it.

2015 to 2026

How far back it goes.

Building and trades companies still on the register, by year of incorporation, and the like-for-like comparison underneath: the first 10 months of 2026 against the same 10 months of 2025.

New building companies in the UK, by year

2015 to 2026 · 2026 counts January to October only

Complete years 2026, part year
January to October 2026 65,495 New building companies so far this year
Same months, 2025 57,520 Up 14% year on year
2025, the last full year 66,697 Against 21,770 in 2015

Older years undercount. The register only holds companies that still exist. Anything formed in an earlier year and since dissolved has dropped off it, so the further back the chart goes the more it undercounts. That alone makes every trade look like it is growing. Some of the rise here is real growth and some of it is simply that recent companies have had less time to close. The long view of UK company formation takes the same problem apart across all 39 trades.

The like-for-like measure inside the family: January to October 2026 against the same months of 2025. Both runs of months are equally recent, so neither has had longer to lose companies off the register.
Trade Change Jan–Oct 2025 Jan–Oct 2026
Plumbers & HVAC Up 28% 4,437 5,677
Electricians Up 16% 5,051 5,873
Construction Up 12% 45,259 50,901
Landscaping Up 10% 2,773 3,044

4 of the 4 trades in this family registered more companies in the first 10 months of 2026 than in the same months of 2025; 0 registered fewer. Plumbers & HVAC moved most on the way up, at 28%.

Nov 2025 – Oct 2026

Where building firms are starting.

New building companies registered over the last twelve months, by the post town on the registered office address, or, where that office is a formation agent, by the town the company's directors run their other companies from.

The outlier 7,366 London

London is counted as a single post town, so it is not really in the same contest as the rest of the list. It took 5.6 times as many new building companies last year as Birmingham. Leaving it in the ranking below would squash every other bar to a stub, so it sits up here on its own.

1,306 Birmingham, the next town down, reaches the white mark 7,366 London, the whole bar

Ranked 2 to 16, without London

Bars scaled to Birmingham at 1,306, not to London

02 Birmingham 1,306
03 Manchester 1,281
04 Glasgow 1,072
05 Bristol 845
06 Liverpool 775
07 Leeds 774
08 Nottingham 729
09 Ilford 718
10 Leicester 658
11 Luton 541
12 Romford 495
13 Sheffield 495
14 Hayes 485
15 Southampton 482
16 Northampton 465

Each town above links to its busiest building trade there where that pairing has enough volume for a page, and to the town itself where it does not. Every town counted, ranked and linked.

Five rows from this list, with an email found

Real companies from the file, picked from the ones we found an email for: most companies this new have none yet. The full file has every column and the whole address. We hide most of each email here, never in the file you buy.

CompanyTownRegisteredTradeEmail
OCEAN SHORE (SW) LTDSt Austell13 Aug 2026Constructioni•••@ocean-shore.co.uk
EIRFLOW LTDChesterfield30 Apr 2026Constructioni•••@eirflow.co.uk
MULLINS AIR CONDITIONING SERVICES LTDRuislip20 Jul 2026Constructioni•••@mullinsairconditioningservices.co.uk
ALTRIX FACILITIES LTDLondon18 Jul 2026Constructions•••@altrixfacilities.co.uk
REVO CONSTRUCTIONS LTDLuton10 Aug 2026Constructioni•••@revoconstructions.co.uk