The insolvency numbers for this financial year are tracking roughly 28 percent above the year before, and the year before wasn't exactly a quiet one either. Same story I wrote about back in September, contracts locked in at 2021 prices, finally running out of road as costs keep outpacing what those contracts actually pay.
What's changed since then is the scale. This isn't a handful of struggling builders anymore, it's a genuine structural problem working through the industry. Every project caught mid-build when a builder fails adds months of delay and often real cost to the owner, on top of whatever the builder themselves lost.
If you're commissioning new work right now, checking a builder's financial position isn't optional anymore. It's the single highest-leverage piece of due diligence available to you.