93% of UK tradespeople say running their business is stressing them out, new national report finds

  Posted by: electime      22nd July 2026

Ninety-three per cent of UK tradespeople experience stress or anxiety from running their business, with almost half saying it happens regularly, as admin and cashflow pressures eat into their evenings, weekends and time off – according to new national research.

The NOW Report: National Outlook on the Trades Workforce 2026, commissioned jointly by Powered Now and Installer and carried out by independent research company Fusion Insight & Strategy, surveyed 140 heating engineers, plumbers, electricians, builders and other tradespeople across the UK during June 2026.

Business admin – quoting, invoicing and chasing payments – takes an average of five hours and 20 minutes a week, much of it done in the evenings or at weekends. More than half (52%) haven’t taken a week’s holiday in the past 12 months. Cashflow makes it worse: tradespeople are owed an average of £5,901 in unpaid invoices, and 67% say a customer has deliberately delayed or disputed a payment.

Benjamin Dyer, CEO and Co-Founder of Powered Now, said the findings reflect conversations the company has with tradespeople every day.

“Nobody gets into this business because they love the paperwork,” said Benjamin Dyer. “They get into it because they’re good with their hands, because there’s real satisfaction in doing a job well. But the craft comes packaged with quoting, invoicing, chasing payments and a business to run – usually alone, usually after a full day on site. The trades are full of people who are proud of what they do but get quietly ground down by everything else.”

And yet the pride runs deeper than the frustration. Despite the pressure, 84% of respondents said they would still recommend a career in the trades to a young person today, and 51% of business owners feel confident about the year ahead.

In response to findings like these, Powered Now recently launched an AI Receptionist that answers the calls tradespeople can’t get to while they’re on the tools – tackling one specific driver of lost work and admin pressure identified in the research.

The full NOW Report is available now at https://powerednow.com/resources/now-report/.