Notes on the UK SME consulting market in spring 2026

We’ve been operating for just over three months now. That’s not long enough to make sweeping pronouncements about the consulting market, but it’s long enough to have noticed a few patterns. This is a short, informal look at what we’re seeing at the SME and lower mid-market end of the UK consulting landscape — written more as observations than as analysis.

Demand has shifted faster than supply

The most striking thing is how quickly demand patterns are changing relative to how slowly most firms are adapting. Three areas in particular are running ahead of where the market is set up to serve them.

First, AI-related strategy work. Almost every SME we’ve spoken with this quarter has a question about AI — whether to invest, how to evaluate vendors, where the productivity gains actually are. Few have a clear plan, and most existing consulting firms either over-promise (presenting AI as a panacea) or under-deliver (treating it as just another tool). There’s a sizable middle ground that almost nobody is occupying well.

Second, compliance-meets-strategy. New legislation in 2025 and early 2026 — the DMCC Act, Online Safety Act, evolving GDPR enforcement, Procurement Act implementation — has created a category of question that isn’t quite legal advice and isn’t quite strategy. SMEs need help working out what these changes mean for how they actually operate. Most law firms handle the legal compliance piece; most consultancies handle the strategy piece; the integration is sparsely served.

Third, post-pandemic operating model rethinks. A surprising number of businesses are only now — five years on — properly redesigning how they work after the changes forced by 2020. Hybrid arrangements that were temporary became permanent without anyone really designing them. There’s a wave of operational redesign work coming through.

Pricing is bifurcating

The middle of the market — mid-range day rates, mid-range firm sizes — feels thinner than it did a few years ago. We’re seeing a clearer split between two ends.

At one end, large established consultancies are charging more than they used to, justified by perceived expertise and risk reduction. At the other end, fractional executives and senior freelancers are charging premium day rates for senior judgement on short engagements.

In between, traditional mid-tier consultancies are under pressure. They cost too much to compete with freelancers on small engagements, and don’t have the scale or breadth to compete with the big firms on large ones. We’re a small firm by choice, but we hear from a lot of mid-sized peers that they’re finding positioning harder than they used to.

Hiring is the constraint

Every consultancy founder we’ve spoken with this quarter has said some version of the same thing: there isn’t a shortage of demand, there’s a shortage of senior people you can trust to deliver. The bottleneck isn’t sales; it’s hiring.

This matches our experience. We’ve passed on work this quarter not because we didn’t want it, but because we couldn’t credibly resource it. Our earlier piece mentioned underestimating the operational burden of running engagements; we’d add hiring to that list now.

One implication: clients evaluating consultancies should ask harder questions about who specifically will deliver their engagement. Capacity constraints are increasingly the issue, not capability.

Procurement is professionalising

Clients are buying consulting more carefully than they used to. Procurement teams — even in companies that didn’t previously involve procurement in consulting purchases — are getting more involved. Reference checking, capability statements, security questionnaires, and procurement-led negotiations are more common at smaller engagement sizes than they used to be.

This is broadly a good thing for the market and for clients. It does require small consultancies to invest more in the paperwork side of selling than was historically necessary. We’ve spent meaningfully more time on procurement documentation this quarter than we’d budgeted for.

Geographic patterns

The London-centric model of UK consulting is loosening. Several of our clients this quarter have been based outside London — in Manchester, Bristol, Leeds, and Edinburgh — and have been explicit that they prefer working with consultancies that aren’t trying to fly in for every meeting. Distributed working has made this both more workable and more expected.

Our own hiring has reflected this: of our team of six, only three are within commuting distance of our London office. We don’t think this is unique to us.

What we expect for the rest of 2026

Three predictions, all of them tentative.

The AI-strategy gap will get filled by someone, eventually — likely a combination of new specialist firms and the big consultancies developing better practices. The window for differentiation is open but won’t stay open forever.

Compliance-meets-strategy will continue to be underserved, partly because it requires firms to develop genuine cross-disciplinary capability rather than partnerships.

Pricing pressure on mid-tier firms will continue. We’d expect to see consolidation or specialisation in that segment over the next 12-18 months.

None of these are particularly bold predictions. The interesting market questions are the ones we don’t know enough about yet.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you collect these observations?

Conversations with prospective clients, existing clients, peer firms, and people we’ve worked with previously. It’s qualitative, not data-driven.

Does CM Beyer do AI strategy work?

Yes, within CMB Insight. We don’t promote it heavily because the field is still settling, but we’ve taken on engagements specifically around it.

Will you publish a fuller market report?

Not currently planned. The observations here are useful but we’d want significantly more data before publishing anything formal.

Are you hiring?

Not actively, but always open to conversations with experienced people. Get in touch.