Recovery or Illusion? What the Market Data Really Says

Barbour ABI's data shows a market that has stopped falling without starting to recover and national averages that hide almost everything worth knowing. Contract award volume rose 2.9% in H1 2026, the first increase in three years, and it grew in eight of eleven regions; yet six of those eleven are still below their 2023 real value, and the industry is clearing roughly 1,450 fewer contracts every half-year than it was three years ago. The recovery is also landing almost entirely at the top of the market: awards under £1m are down a third since 2023, while £100m+ schemes now take 34.9% of all value, up from 23.9%, and the average award has risen from £5.80m to £8.40m, the same money moving through fewer, bigger contracts. Strip infrastructure out and real value sits almost 8% below 2023 on more than a quarter less volume, so a single sector is holding the national totals up. Even the sector ranking flips with the basis: infrastructure is up 55% over three years but just 5% year on year, and residential is the exact reverse. This session puts our data in front of the room to work out who the stabilisation is actually reaching and why a flat national headline describes almost nobody's market.