The UK surveying industry is under mounting pressure as compliance demands grow faster than the sector’s capacity to respond, a bottleneck that is now feeding directly into the country’s housing shortage.

And the growing mismatch between regulatory capacity and market demand is likely to intensify calls for the government to accelerate approvals and modernise compliance systems.

With housing delivery already lagging targets across much of the country, industry figures warn that the shortage of surveying capacity risks becoming a brake on economic growth.

REGULATORY REQUIREMENTS

Analysis from Property Inspect warns that while demand for surveyors is rising, particularly across building safety and retrofit projects, the pipeline of qualified professionals is struggling to keep pace with new regulatory requirements.

The latest figures from the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) underline the challenge.

Overall workloads posted a net balance of –3% in the second quarter of 2025, with just 17% of respondents expecting growth over the next year. Although infrastructure projects remain a relative bright spot, 61% of firms cited planning and regulatory delays as their biggest obstacle, and 39% pointed to labour shortages, with surveyors among the hardest roles to recruit.

DELIVERY DRAG

The approval process itself has become a drag on delivery. Since October 2023, the Building Safety Regulator has received 2,108 Gateway applications but approved only 338, an approval rate of just 16%. Average approval times have stretched to 25 weeks — more than double the 12-week target.

Those delays are already having an impact on housebuilding. London saw just 1,210 new home starts in the first quarter of 2025, the lowest figure for 16 years and far short of the capital’s stated ambition to deliver 88,000 homes a year.

EVIDENCE PINCH POINT

Siân Hemming-Metcalfe, operations director at Property Inspect, said: “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.”

SUBMISSION READY PACKS

She added: “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.”