Commercial opportunity: new building trade companies in the UK, Q2 2026

5,730 new building trade companies were registered in the UK in the second quarter of 2026, up 6.7% on Q2 2025. London had the most, with 1,098 (19.2% of the market). Each one is a company making its first supplier decisions.

Companies registered for electrical installation, plumbing, heating and air-conditioning installation, or other building completion and finishing. This report is part of CompaniesIQ's Commercial Opportunity series: exact Companies House counts for one market, where it is, how long its companies last, and who sells into it. The full dataset is downloadable.

Build this market → — every active company in these codes formed in the last 12 months, on the live register.

What we found

• 5,730 new building trade companies in Q2 2026, against 5,370 in Q2 2025 (+6.7%).
• 2.96% of all 193,829 UK incorporations in the quarter.
• London led with 1,098, followed by Manchester (120) and Birmingham (98).
• 45.5% of building trade companies formed in 2020 had not been dissolved five years later, above the 38.8% for all UK companies formed that year.

A company can list up to four SIC codes, so the code rows overlap and add up to more than the market total of 5,730, which counts each company once.

Where new building trade companies are registering

The 15 places above account for 33.8% of the market. A registered office is a legal correspondence address, not a place of business, so place counts show where companies are registered rather than where they operate — accountants' and formation agents' addresses pull registrations towards city centres, London especially. 18 companies in this market were registered at the Companies House default address in Cardiff (used when a registered office is removed) and are excluded from Cardiff's figure.

How long they last

Of the 20,293 building trade companies incorporated in 2020, 45.5% had not been dissolved by the end of 2025 — above the 38.8% for every UK company formed that year. Survival here means not dissolved; a surviving company may be dormant, and most dissolutions are voluntary rather than business failures. The full picture by cohort is in our company survival study.

What this means: who sells to new building trade companies

Trade companies are usually formed by people already working in the trade, so they start taking jobs quickly — insurance, vehicles and merchant accounts are needed in the first weeks. That is the case for reaching new building trade companies early — and for working from the live register rather than a list that was current months ago.

Build this market → opens every active company in these codes formed in the last 12 months. Narrow it to a town from the table above, or get new registrations weekly with free new-company alerts.

Methodology

Where the figures come from. Every figure is an exact hit count from the Companies House advanced company search API, taken on 2026-10-08. The market is every company incorporated between 2026-04-01 and 2026-06-30 that lists at least one of SIC 43210, 43220, 43390. The codes are queried together, so a company listing more than one is counted once in the market total.

Places. 39 UK towns and cities were each counted with one exact query, matching the registered-office address. Companies at the Companies House default address — a Cardiff postcode used when a registered office is removed — were measured (18 in this market and period) and subtracted from Cardiff.

Survival. Survival is the share of companies incorporated in 2020 that had not been dissolved by 2025-12-31, for this market's codes and for all UK companies. The method matches our company survival study.

Who sells into the market. The buyer table is editorial: written by CompaniesIQ Research from the typical set-up needs of a new company in the market, and reviewed like any other copy. It is not derived from the register and makes no claim about any individual company.

Limitations.

• SIC codes are chosen by whoever files the incorporation and are not verified, so a market defined by SIC codes includes some companies that do something else and misses some that list a different code.
• A registered office is a legal correspondence address, not a place of business, so place counts show where companies are registered rather than where they operate.
• These are registrations, not trading businesses: some companies never trade, and counts for recent periods rise slightly as late registrations are processed.
• Survival here means not dissolved; a surviving company may be dormant, and most dissolutions are voluntary rather than business failures.

Data and licence

• Period covered: 2026-04-01 to 2026-06-30 (inclusive), compared with 2025-04-01 to 2025-06-30.
• Source: Companies House register (advanced company search API).
• Retrieved: 2026-10-08.
• Licence: Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Company data © Crown copyright.
• Download: commercial-opportunity-building-trades-q2-2026.csv — every figure and the query behind it.

Citation. CompaniesIQ Research (2026). Commercial opportunity: new building trade companies in the UK, Q2 2026. Available at: https://www.companiesiq.co.uk/blog/commercial-opportunity-building-trades-q2-2026