New domestic-building companies in the UK rose 88.5% between 2016 and 2025

Each bar shows the number of new companies incorporated in that calendar year under SIC code 41202, construction of domestic buildings. Only complete calendar years are shown. The post-2020 surge reflects the broader rise in company formation during the economic recovery, before a cooling period from 2023.

The same measure shown month by month, from mid-2015 to the present. The long climb to the 2022 peak is visible, followed by a period of consolidation. The dashed tail marks the most recent 2 months, which are provisional because Companies House indexes very recent incorporations with a short lag.

Construction output data (ONS CGBR series) will be added in a future update once a machine-readable feed is available.

The table below breaks down formations by the six most active SIC codes for Apr 2026, showing the spread of new company activity across the sector.

Incorporations are only half the story. Every year, thousands of construction companies are also dissolved, removed from the Companies House register through strike-off, liquidation or administration. Net formation, incorporations minus dissolutions in the same calendar year, tells you whether the population of construction companies is actually growing.

Net formation across all 19 construction SIC codes fell -95.6% between 2016 and 2025, from 30,361 more companies than were lost in 2016 to just 1,341 in 2025. Gross incorporations rose for most of that period before easing back from their 2022 peak, but dissolutions climbed in almost every single year, so the net addition to the construction company population has nearly disappeared. For domestic-building companies (SIC 41202) specifically, 2025 was the first year on record where more companies were dissolved than incorporated: a net loss of 311 companies.

Dissolutions are companies actually removed from the Companies House register (company_status = dissolved), not insolvency events specifically: a company can be dissolved through simple voluntary strike-off as well as after liquidation or administration. See the UK Construction Insolvency Index for insolvency-specific procedures.

The table ranks the eight main CIS subcontractor trades by new company formations in the latest full calendar year, alongside the trailing 12-month total (settled data only). Each trade is a single SIC code within the 19-code construction universe. Thin segments (fewer than 120 formations in the trailing year) are not shown separately.

Averaged across 2016 to 2025, new construction company formations show a consistent March spike: the month before the UK tax year closes on 5 April runs roughly 15% above the calendar-year monthly mean. The pattern is visible across all major construction trades and in the all-construction union.

The most likely driver is tax-year-boundary planning. A sole trader who incorporates before 6 April can open their company accounting period at the start of the new tax year, avoiding the complication of overlapping tax years and capturing a full year of company-level tax efficiency from day one. CIS contractors also benefit immediately on incorporation: a limited company can reclaim its monthly CIS deductions in-year via the Employer Payment Summary, whereas a sole trader waits until the following January Self Assessment filing. Both incentives concentrate activity in the final weeks of the tax year.

April itself falls back sharply (around 11% below March) as the pre-year-end rush completes. December is the seasonal low, reflecting the general slowdown in company formation over the Christmas period.

Incorporations. For each month, we query the Companies House Advanced Search API for companies incorporated under each of the 19 construction SIC codes spanning Division 41 (building construction), Division 42 (civil engineering), and Division 43 (specialised construction activities). The deduplicated union counts each company once even where it registers under multiple construction SIC codes. Counts are gross: a company that has since been dissolved still appears on the register, so the series carries no survivorship bias. The most recent 2 months are provisional and excluded from headline figures.

Trade segments. Each trade row is a single SIC code cut of the 19-code universe. The union count is unchanged: a company registered under multiple construction SIC codes is still counted once. Roofing (SIC 43910) is a reserved future addition and is deliberately excluded to avoid revising the published union. Trade and division figures are additive within their SIC set but do not sum to the union (which deduplicates cross-SIC registrations).

Net formation. Dissolutions are fetched from the same Companies House Advanced Search API, filtering on company_status = dissolved with a dissolved-date window instead of an incorporation-date window, for the same 19 SIC codes and division/segment groupings used throughout this page. Net formation for the in-progress current year is capped to the same settled-through month as incorporations, so the partial-year figure compares like with like: dissolutions data itself has no equivalent indexing lag, but capping it avoids an artificially negative partial-year net formation figure caused only by counting more months of dissolutions than incorporations.

Updated. Incorporations to Apr 2026 (settled data). Net formation (dissolutions) generated Jul 2026. Data generated Jul 2026.

• Companies House Advanced Search API (Companies House)

Download the incorporation data (CSV)

Download the net formation data (CSV)

Free to cite and republish with attribution to Trade Tax Specialists. This page is a data summary and does not constitute tax advice on any individual situation.