UK facilities management in 2027: budget pressure, AI and the trust gap

Only 48% of UK FM leaders can hold their budget. A year ago it was 72%.

UK facilities management (FM) teams are firefighting less than they were a year ago. They are also finding it much harder to stay within budget. That is one of the most significant findings from our second annual survey of 250 senior FM leaders, carried out independently by UK Omnibus Group.

Are FM operations getting better or worse?

Operations are improving: the share of teams firefighting weekly or daily has fallen from 73% to 64%. However, finances are getting worse: the share of leaders who find it easy to stay within budget has dropped significantly from 72% to 48%, the sharpest decline in the study.

The cost of reactive work has barely moved. Teams still spend 44% of their time on unscheduled work, and miss 42% of key SLAs through a lack of real-time insight. A year of investment has bought calm, not capacity.

Why are FM budgets harder to hold?

Budgets are still growing for most, but fewer: 61% of respondents report an increase on budget over three years, that is down from 78% last year. Meanwhile 49% of the average budget already goes on software and technology. Any new system has to replace existing spend or pay for itself quickly.

Labour is the next pressure. 89% of leaders expect the Employment Rights Act to raise their labour costs. At the same time, the share choosing higher pay as their answer to labour shortages has fallen from 35% to 18%. Automation and AI-powered tools now lead the list at 30%.

What do clients see that FM teams don't?

One finding stands out for anyone who reads their own dashboards with confidence: Among facility managers, 45% report maintenance-related loss of client trust. Among customers commissioning the work, it is 65%.

This gap matters at renewal. Around eight in ten leaders are confident their clients can see the work being delivered. Yet over six in ten still have clients questioning whether a contract should continue. The warning signs are arriving, just not on the dashboard.

What is stopping FM teams adopting AI?

96% of leaders have strategic priorities calling for AI, but only 25% have more than half of it running beyond pilot. The barriers that grew fastest this year are digital skills gaps (24% to 34%) and return on investment (21% to 31%).

Leaders have also been clear about what they want instead. 74% would adopt an AI-powered layer across their existing systems rather than replace them. CAFM use has fallen from 88% to 60%, and among those without one, the most requested features are performance dashboards, real-time job completion evidence for clients, and a simple interface.

Read the full report

The full report covers seven key FM areas: budget control, client trust, reactive operations, labour and lost knowledge, technology adoption, the Employment Rights Act, and the 2027 agenda in leaders' own words.

Download the 2027 UK FM Market Research Report