UK Architectural and Engineering Consultancy Insolvency Statistics

There were 141 architectural and engineering consultancy insolvencies between January and June 2026, against 147 in the same six months of 2025, essentially unchanged, a fall of 4.1%. Professional, scientific and technical activities as a whole fell 7.5% over the same months, from 983 to 909, so this trade held up better than the section around it.

These are Company Debt calculations from Insolvency Service Table A1b data.

The rolling 12-month figure makes the divergence clearer. At 329 cases for the year to June 2026, against 311 for the year to June 2025, insolvencies rose 5.8%, while the section’s rolling total fell. This is the one trade in professional and technical services that is still genuinely growing, not merely failing to fall.

Every other trade covered on this site inside professional, scientific and technical activities is either flat or easing. Architectural and engineering consultancy is not.

Other professional activities not elsewhere classified fell 44.7%, though from a smaller base where a handful of cases swings the percentage sharply. Management consultancy eased 4.5%. Advertising and activities of head offices were both close to flat, down 1.2% and up 7.0%.

Architectural and engineering consultancy’s own year-to-date change is close to flat too, down 4.1%, but its rolling 12-month total, the steadier measure, is up 5.8%, one of the only genuine increases among the trades in this table. It has also risen in every calendar year since 2020, a run none of its neighbours can match.

A section total moving sideways can still hide one trade that has never stopped growing since the pandemic. This is that trade.

Architectural and engineering consultancy insolvencies held broadly flat before the pandemic, 143 in 2016 rising gently to 182 by 2019. 2020 brought a fall to 140, in line with the wider pattern of government support and restricted winding-up petitions holding the normal insolvency cycle back.

What followed did not stop. 242 in 2021, 295 in 2022, 305 in 2023, 329 in 2024, 335 in 2025: five consecutive years of increases, each smaller than the last but none of them a fall. No other trade on this site has climbed for five straight years without a single down year.

The result is a sector now running at close to double its pre-pandemic level, 84% above 2019, with no sign in the annual figures of the plateau or pull-back seen elsewhere in professional services.

In the architecture and engineering practices we see, the trigger is rarely the current project. It is usually a much older one, a claim, a subsidence letter, an insurer’s reservation of rights, on a building finished years ago that the director had stopped thinking about.

Professional indemnity renewal is the date that concentrates minds. A premium that jumps sharply, or an insurer that declines to quote at all for higher-risk work, can force a decision inside weeks that the practice’s own trading would never have forced on its own.

Fee income in this trade is lumpy by nature, a handful of larger projects rather than a steady flow, so one delayed planning decision or one client pausing a scheme can strip out a quarter’s revenue without any single dramatic event. HMRC arrears usually build quietly during exactly that kind of gap.

We would not start with the project pipeline. We would look at what the claims history and PI renewal terms actually say, how concentrated fee income is across live projects, how much of the work sits on schemes that could still be paused or cancelled, and what is owed to HMRC.

A practice with a strong technical reputation and a genuine claims-free history usually has more room to negotiate, on insurance and with creditors, than one already fighting a live claim. The earlier that conversation happens, the more of that room is still available.

SIC group 711 covers companies whose recorded primary business is architectural and engineering consultancy and related technical consultancy: building design, structural and civil engineering, and related technical advice. It sits within professional, scientific and technical activities, alongside management consultancy and other trades recorded separately.

This trade has risen every calendar year since 2020, the only one covered on this site to do so. Even so, the year-to-date and rolling 12-month totals remain the steadier guide to the current trend than any single month.

These are company counts, not the number of architects, engineers or projects affected. A single insolvent company may be a sole-practitioner practice or a multi-disciplinary consultancy employing dozens.

The figures are insolvency volumes, not a failure rate. They are not adjusted for the number of active practices, which has also grown since 2019, so a rising count does not, on its own, prove a rising rate of failure.

The SIC 711 figures come from Table A1b and are not seasonally adjusted. The latest month is provisional and can be revised.

None of the figures above decide whether a particular practice is viable. What matters is narrower: what live or historic claims exist, how insurance renewal is likely to go, how concentrated fee income is across current projects, and what is genuinely owed to HMRC.

Plenty of practices in difficulty are technically sound businesses carrying an insurance-driven cash shock or a delayed project payment, and that is usually fixable if it is addressed early.

If you are reading this with a premium renewal or a payment run coming and the cash is not there, the thing worth knowing is that the earlier you speak to someone, the more room there is to move: supplier or lender terms renegotiated, an HMRC Time to Pay arrangement, or a rescue procedure such as a Company Voluntary Arrangement or administration.

Once a winding-up petition is advertised, the bank account is usually frozen within days, and at that point creditors’ voluntary liquidation may be the only route still open. If you want to talk it through first, our insolvency advice for directors is the place to start.