Surveying capacity is being outpaced by compliance demand
The surveying industry has a problem: the shrinking capacity of surveyors is coming face to face with an increased compliance demand. Expert insight from Property Inspect suggests that increasing the workforce alone is not enough to fix the problem. The profession must also be equipped with Golden Thread compliant evidence packs that accelerate building safety and retrofit workflows.
The UK construction sector is in an awkward bind. On one hand, demand for competent surveying – from quantity surveying to building control, land and geomatics – is only going one way: up. On the other, regulatory obligations are tightening, workloads are becoming more complex, and the pipeline of qualified professionals isn’t keeping pace.
RICS data shows workloads are dwindling due to regulatory delays
The latest RICS market data underlines the point: overall workloads posted a net balance of -3% in Q2 2025, with just +17% of respondents expecting growth over the next 12 months. Infrastructure is the only clear bright spot, showing an +11% net balance, driven by energy (+34%) and water/sewage (+27%) projects. But the optimism is tempered by the fact that 61% of firms cite planning and regulatory delays as their top obstacle, while 39% point to labour shortage – with surveyors among the hardest roles to recruit.
But the figures don’t tell the whole story
But the numbers don’t tell the whole story and here’s the catch: the “surveyors are disappearing” narrative that resurfaces every few months is based on ONS UK Business: Activity, Size and Location data. This is a solid dataset, but it counts enterprises (VAT/PAYE-registered businesses) not the number of working surveyors. Consolidation, mergers, or a shift to larger multi-disciplinary firms can all show up as a “decline” without a single professional leaving the industry.
Lumping all of 71.12 together and calling it “surveyors” is methodologically flawed and doesn’t account for the nuances of the industry. It’s like counting every engineer as a structural engineer – technically possible in a spreadsheet, but guaranteed to mislead.
The Golden Thread is raising the standard
Even if the headcount is held steady, the nature of the work has changed. The Golden Thread requires accurate, accessible and enduring building information. PAS 9980:2022 has formalised the evidence expectations for external wall appraisals. PAS 2035:2023 has made whole-dwelling assessments and ongoing quality assurance the baseline for retrofit projects. These frameworks raise the standard for quality, traceability, and submission-readiness of site evidence – and the profession hasn’t fully adapted.
But Building Safety Regulator still a choke point
Meanwhile, the Building Safety Regulator has become a choke point. From October 2023 to March 2025, it received 2,108 Gateway applications – but approved only 338 of them, a 16% approval rate. The average approval time has stretched to 25 weeks, and in some cases to 36 weeks, triple the original 12-week target.
That delay has real-world consequences: new homebuilding in London hit a 16-year low in Q1 2025, with just an estimated 1,210 starts, a fraction of the proposed annual goal of 88,000.
Siân Hemming-Metcalfe, Operations Director at Property Inspect, comments:
“Whether you’re a QS, a building surveyor, or a geomatics specialist, the pinch point isn’t people alone – it’s evidence. If inspections ship with Golden-Thread-ready data – geolocated media, material provenance and PAS-aligned templates – approvals move faster, re-visits fall, and chartered resources spend more time surveying and less time repackaging photos for submissions.
If the industry frames the challenge purely as a labour shortage, the solution will always be “find more surveyors” – a slow, expensive fix. The faster win is enabling the existing workforce to produce submission-ready evidence packs as standard. That means templated capture, structured metadata, and integrated reporting systems that work across disciplines.
Surveying capacity is not defined by headcount alone. It’s defined by the volume of compliant, decision-ready information those professionals can deliver. In that sense, ‘evidence-ready’ surveys, reports, and inspections represent capacity – and right now, we need more of them.”
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