The Great North: Who Will Staff the Pipeline?
Our first article in this series, The Great North: One Year On , ended with a question: can the North build the capacity to deliver? The investment case is moving quickly. In May 2026, the Great North Investment Summit in Leeds launched a joint investment prospectus, and NatWest committed £20bn to the North over the next ten years.
Capacity is harder to measure. Cobalt is working with BE News on Map the Gap, an industry-wide study of where skills shortages exist across the built environment and what is driving them. Hiring is also one of the earliest places capacity shows, so we looked back at five years of our own northern briefs.
Read the full briefing: The Great North. One Year On
Demand has shifted to specialist roles
In 2021/22, planning, surveying, development and land, and construction and project management made up under a third of our northern briefs. In 2025/26 they made up more than three in five. Over the same period, lettings, building management and back-office roles shrank as a share of the work.
Planning saw the sharpest change, rising from 4% of our northern briefs in 2022/23 to 27% in 2024/25. It eased in 2025/26 but remains joint largest. Development and land roles doubled in 2025/26, to 12% of our northern briefs. The rise in planning demand came before the May 2026 investment announcements, so new capital is arriving in a market where specialist demand was already high.
More senior demand, uneven supply
Seniority has moved too. Head of, Associate Director and Director briefs rose from one in twenty of our northern briefs in 2021/22 to 15% in 2025/26, the highest share in five years. Employers are hiring people to lead work, not only to resource it.
Supply is uneven across functions. Surveying and advisory is the only function in our northern data that held its volume through all five years, and it is among the hardest to fill: around 23% of those roles became placements. Construction and project management, which rebounded in 2025/26 to nearly a fifth of our northern briefs, was similar, at 22%. Development and land, by contrast, converted at 41%, and estates and facilities, which held broadly steady, at 34%.
When the roles that are most consistently needed are also among the hardest to fill, that is where delivery risk builds. The wider evidence points the same way: CITB forecasts that construction will need about 206,000 additional workers between 2026 and 2030, and our recent Wednesday Insights noted employers competing for a small pool of experienced planners, with fewer people being developed into the profession.
What this means for year two
For investors, deliverability deserves the same scrutiny as viability. Every appraisal assumes a team will be in place to deliver the scheme. When surveying and project management briefs in our data convert at little more than one in five, that assumption needs testing.
For developers and employers, workforce planning needs to run alongside investment planning, or they will be competing for the same specialists at the same moment. Widening the definition of relevant experience helps. Civil engineers, site engineers and construction managers bring transferable skills in sequencing, logistics and delivery, and with training can move into planning. We have helped two civil engineers make that move with a major infrastructure consultancy.
The question has narrowed
A year ago, the question was whether the North could attract investment. Now it is whether the North has enough of the right specialists, and the leaders to direct them. Capital can be committed at a summit. Experienced surveyors, planners and project leaders cannot. Year two will be decided less by the size of the pipeline than by how quickly the North can staff it.
Our data reflects one firm's hiring, not the whole market. Map the Gap, through its employer and employee surveys, will give the sector a broader evidence base on where shortages sit and what is driving them.
Read the full briefing: The Great North. One Year On
Sources
Cobalt northern job data, 2021/22 to 2025/26 (internal analysis; shares and fill rates only, excluding NHS estates work and Merseyside)
The Great North: One Year On briefing, Cobalt (2026)
NatWest commits £20bn across the North of England, Place North West (May 2026)
Map the Gap campaign outline, supplied by BE News / Cobalt
