£25.1bn in turnover, 235,916 employees and 4,210 enterprises, at March 2024. Almost every published answer to this question comes from a paywalled market-research estimate. This one comes from the Office for National Statistics — which published it as a spreadsheet with three numbers in it and no commentary. Here it is with the comparisons worked out.
The headline figure
£25.1 billion
The UK's combined facilities management industry turned over £25.1 billion in 2024.
That is the turnover of every VAT- or PAYE-registered UK enterprise classified to SIC 2007 class 81100, Combined facilities management, at March 2024 — up from £15.3 billion at March 2015, a rise of 64.3%. SIC 81100 covers providers selling bundled facilities management, so it excludes standalone cleaning, security and catering contracts and every in-house FM team. It is the measured FM industry, not total UK FM spend.
How this was derived: Turnover column of the ONS table for 2024, stated there as £25,076,487 thousand and converted to billions. ONS advises that turnover in this release is drawn from sources it is unable to verify, so it is an indicative rather than a survey-grade figure. · Link to this figure
Citing this analysis?
PM Assist, "UK Facilities Management Market Size: 2024 ONS Analysis", analysis of ONS, “Facilities management count, employment and turnover, 2015 and 2024” (ad hoc release 3013, 12 September 2025), 2026. https://pmassist.co.uk/uk-facilities-management-market-size
“The UK FM market” is quoted at anywhere between £25 billion and well over £100 billion, and writers reasonably assume somebody must be wrong. Mostly they are not. The figures measure different boundaries, and picking the right one depends entirely on the claim you are making.
The FM industry
£25.1bn
Turnover of firms whose business is facilities management — SIC 81100, combined facilities management. Counted from VAT and PAYE records, not modelled. Use it for claims about the FM supply market: how many providers there are, how much they bill, how many people they employ.
The FM sector
£102bn
IWFM's estimate of the whole workplace and facilities management sector's contribution to the UK economy, including in-house teams and standalone cleaning, security and catering. Use it for claims about the scale of FM activity as a whole.
The gap between them is not error, it is scope — and it is a useful figure in its own right. Most facilities management in the UK is not bought from a facilities management company. It is done by in-house teams, or bought as separate cleaning, security and catering contracts that never touch a bundled FM provider. SIC 81100 is the part of the sector that has been outsourced to a single supplier, and it is the part ONS can count precisely.
ONS published the two years side by side. Indexing them to 2015 = 100 shows that the three measures did not move together — and the one that grew fastest was the number of firms.
Employment in SIC 81100 rose from 162,765 at March 2015 to 235,916 at March 2024, a 44.9% increase over 9 years. This counts people employed by FM providers; it excludes in-house FM staff, who are counted under their employer's own industry.
How this was derived: Employment column of the ONS table, 2015 and 2024 rows, with the percentage change between them computed here.
The count rose from 2,630 at March 2015 to 4,210 at March 2024 — 60.1% more firms in 9 years, the fastest-growing of the three measures in the release.
How this was derived: Count column of the ONS table. ONS control-rounds these counts to base five, so both years are rounded figures and the change between them inherits that rounding.
Turnover rose from £15.3 billion to £25.1 billion across the 9 years the release compares — a compound annual growth rate of 5.7%. These are cash figures: ONS does not adjust them for inflation, and a substantial part of the rise reflects price growth rather than volume.
How this was derived: Computed from the 2015 and 2024 turnover rows of the ONS table. CAGR is the 9-year compound rate between the same two values. ONS advises that turnover in this release is drawn from sources it is unable to verify, so it is an indicative rather than a survey-grade figure.
Dividing 2024 turnover by 2024 employment gives £106,294 per employee, against £93,754 in 2015 — a rise of 13.4% in cash terms over 9 years. Facilities management remains a labour-intensive industry: revenue per head is a fraction of the figure in the professional services sectors it is often procured alongside.
How this was derived: 2024 turnover (£25,076,487 thousand) divided by 2024 employment (235,916), rounded to the nearest £1,000. ONS advises that turnover in this release is drawn from sources it is unable to verify, so it is an indicative rather than a survey-grade figure.
Enterprise numbers grew 60.1% between 2015 and 2024 while employment grew 44.9%, so the average provider got smaller: 61.9 employees in 2015 against 56.0 in 2024. The industry has grown mainly by adding firms rather than by concentrating work in the existing large ones — a fragmentation the market-share narratives around the major contractors do not capture.
How this was derived: Employment divided by enterprise count for each year, from the ONS table. Because ONS control-rounds the counts to base five, the ratio is approximate; the direction of travel is robust to that rounding, since a ±2.5 rounding on 4,210 firms moves the average by well under one employee.
Every figure ONS published in the release, unaltered. Turnover is stated in £ thousands, as in the original.
| Measure | March 2015 | March 2024 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Enterprises | 2,630 | 4,210 | +60.1% |
| Employment | 162,765 | 235,916 | +44.9% |
| Turnover | £15,259,839k | £25,076,487k | +64.3% |
Both years and every derived figure as JSON. Free to reuse under the Open Government Licence v3.0 — please credit PM Assist for the analysis and ONS for the source data.
Download JSONONS published this as an ad hoc release: a single spreadsheet containing one table of two rows, produced on request from the Inter-Departmental Business Register. We read that table and computed the comparisons. We do not model, adjust, deflate or estimate any value — the two years are ONS's, and every ratio states which columns it came from.
ONS, “Facilities management count, employment and turnover, 2015 and 2024” (ad hoc release 3013, 12 September 2025). Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.
It depends which boundary you use, and the difference is large. The officially measured combined facilities management industry — SIC 81100, the firms selling bundled FM — turned over £25.1bn in 2024, according to ONS. Whole-sector estimates that include in-house FM teams and standalone cleaning, security and catering contracts are several times larger; IWFM puts the UK workplace and facilities management sector's contribution to the economy at £102 billion. The ONS figure is the one with a published method behind it.
235,916 people were employed by UK enterprises classified to combined facilities management at March 2024, up from 162,765 in March 2015. That counts people employed by FM providers only — in-house FM staff are counted under their employer's own industry, so the true number of people doing FM work in the UK is considerably higher.
4,210 UK enterprises were registered for VAT and/or PAYE and classified to SIC 81100 at March 2024 — +60.1% on 2015. ONS control-rounds these counts to base five.
Two reasons. Scope: SIC 81100 covers bundled FM provision only, and excludes in-house teams and standalone service contracts, whereas commercial market sizing usually aims at total FM spend. Method: this is a count of actual VAT and PAYE registered turnover from the ONS business register, not a modelled estimate. The vendor reports are not wrong so much as measuring a different, wider thing — and unlike this page, they do not publish the method or the data.
Yes. The underlying data is ONS's, published under the Open Government Licence v3.0. The comparisons, ratios and derived figures on this page are PM Assist's own — please credit PM Assist and link to this page, and credit ONS for the source data. The full dataset is available to download.
This page covers the size of the FM supply market. For the statutory workload behind it, see the UK facilities management statistics hub, the NHS maintenance backlog by trust, or how long gateway 2 approval takes. Or browse all our research and data.