UK consultants anticipate slower growth in 2025 amid market headwinds

Members of the UK representative body for the consulting sector have predicted a year of slower growth in 2026. A survey among the member-firms of the Management Consultancies Association reveals that many expect revenue expansion to be just 6.4% in the coming 12 months, which would be the lowest rate since 2020.

Each year, the Management Consultancies Association (MCA) assesses the health of the UK advisory market, based on the performance of its member firms. In October and November 2024, this saw independent market research agency Savanta partner with the MCA to collect and analyse the organisation’s member data for its latest insight into the sector – polling 1,268 management consultants in the process.

After a year of difficult decisions for many of the market’s players, it might not be a surprise that the average consulting leader is a little more reserved about their predictions than earlier in the decade. Looking ahead for the next 12 months, consultants told the MCA that they expected growth of 6.4% – a healthy margin, but lower than any time since 2020.

With the lockdown months at the start of the 2020s initially seeing demand for consultants pegged back, growth that year was hamstrung at just 4.5%. But as society and the economy opened back up towards the end of that year, the post-lockdown era initially saw an explosion in pent-up demand for many firms.

In 2021, this saw growth for MCA members hit 18%, while in 2022 – despite uncertainty and disruption in the broader market – member firms reported an average of 23% expansion in revenues. Amid this surge in new projects, top consulting firms invested heavily in recruitment, only to see growth slow notably in 2023 to 11% – while anticipating a further decline to 9% in 2024.

Now, as heightened inflation and economic uncertainty around the UK’s slow growth persist, they have re-configured their expectations for the coming period. As well as reducing growth predictions for 2025 from 11% to 6.4% now, they also told surveyors that 2026 would see it accelerate, but only to around 8.7%, suggesting they may not be as bullish about trends including AI, digital transformation and cost efficiency work as they previously were.

With that being said, the study still suggests that there are still significant hopes among UK consultants for the impact these trends will have on their industry. A 66% portion of respondents said they expected consulting services in AI to drive the greatest growth in the sector, ahead of digital technology on 59%, and cost reduction on 46%. Meanwhile, as the UK’s efforts to decarbonise the economy continue, 71% of consultants expect the energy and resource sector to be the second biggest source of consulting demand – behind digital and technology at 85%.

Tamzen Isacsson, CEO of the MCA, said, “From geopolitical instability to high inflation, it has been another challenging year for the economy, and the resilience of our sector in such a climate is testament to our members’ perseverance and surefootedness. This survey illustrates not only the scale of the challenges, but the speed at which the market is moving and how management consulting will be supporting clients from around the globe to grow. There is positive but cautious optimism for the year ahead with a focus on embracing opportunities and overcoming emerging challenges.”

AI is not only expected to be important as a source of work for consultants, however. Respondents indicated that they expected it to play an important role in meeting rising client expectations. Consultants are now expected to do more with less, assisting clients with productivity and helping support business growth, without incurring higher costs – and with hiring freezes or headcount reductions in place at some of the sector’s biggest firms, the £20 billion industry sees AI as an opportunity to meet those demands without extra staff.