Accounts filed at Companies House for the period ending 31 March 2025 show a £5.8 million drop in revenue from the record income levels recorded in the previous year and tumbling profits.
The latest figures reveal the company made a profit before tax of just £248,000 in 2025, an 80 per cent decrease from the £1.27 million posted in 2024 and significantly down on the £2.85 million profit in 2023.
Staff numbers also shrank at the AJ100 practice, which slipped from 7th to 9th place in the latest rankings of the UK’s largest employers of architects.
The company’s average workforce in the 12 months until the end of March 2025 was 269, a fall from 318 in the previous period. According to the accounts, the number of technical staff had decreased from 262 to 215.
While the practice’s income from overseas work dipped from £1.9 million to £1.4 million, revenue from its UK projects fell £33.3 million to £28.1 million.
The company has been asked to formally comment on the figures. A note filed with the 2025 accounts, which mirrors a statement filed in 2024, reads: ‘The directors believe that the principal risks and uncertainties facing the company in the coming year are as follows: potential downturn in the construction industry as a result of the ongoing increases in raw material costs and uncertainty surrounding economic growth.
‘[There is a possible] bad debt risk as a result of client cashflow tightening if construction activity slows.’
Last year it emerged the University of Bristol had put plans for a new £80 million library drawn up by the practice and Schmidt Hammer Lassen on long-term hold.
The university told the AJ that the controversial seven-storey flagship scheme – approved in 2021 with a scheduled opening date in 2026 – had been ‘paused’.
The organisation added that the unbuilt 14,320m² project’s ultimate fate would not be reconsidered within the next three years.
Elsewhere, Hawkins\Brown unveiled a scaled-down design for a library at Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU) after its initial proposal fell foul of escalating construction costs.
Its previous proposal replaced the university’s existing five-storey All Saints library with a 13-storey block containing 22,000m² of floor space. The scheme, in the heart of MMU’s Oxford Road campus, was approved by Manchester City Council in early 2024.
But the university was forced into a rethink on the £90 million proposal due to a ‘significant increase in the building costs’ amid wider cost pressures in the construction sector.