58% of the construction firms that went out of business were specialist contractors, which are facing a variety of key issues such as falls in demand in the two largest construction sectors (private housing new build and private housing rm&i) as well as having to deal with fixed-price contracts combined with high materials prices, IR35, reverse charge VAT, rising P.I. insurance costs and labour availability issues.

This may worsen as we see the full impacts of the fall in housing demand from 2022 Q4 and 2023 Q1 on specialist contractor cash flow in the coming months.