The 2026 Electrical Exit Window: Electrification, Compliance, Tax and Talent

Most electrical contractors I speak to keep half an eye on the market and the other eye on next week's programme, which usually means the programme wins. That is understandable. But every so often several things move at once, and the second half of 2026 is one of those moments. Four separate forces, none of them dramatic on its own, are lining up in a way that changes what buyers will pay and how sellers should prepare.

This briefing walks through each of the four: the wave of infrastructure and data-centre demand now being announced, the reset in how electrification is funded, the tax changes that took effect in April, and the skills gap that has turned a certificated workforce into the most valuable line in a buyer's model. Running underneath all four is the compliance layer, the EICR book and current wiring-regs competence, that converts demand into the recurring, certificated income a buyer actually underwrites. Everything here draws on published sources; where a figure appears, it comes from the body that produced it.

Force OneThe Demand Surge: Infrastructure a Buyer Can See

Buyers do not pay for last year's turnover. They pay for the confidence that revenue will still be there in five years, and in the electrical sector that confidence is currently being underwritten by the grid and by the data-centre boom.

The headline moment this summer came on 10 June 2026, when the government announced a £1.1bn AI hardware plan, including Apatura's plan to convert the former Ravenscraig steelworks in Scotland into one of the UK's largest green AI data centres. Around it sits a wider announced pipeline: roughly £14bn of data-centre projects tied to the national AI action plan, with named commitments from Nscale, Vantage and a £22bn Microsoft investment under the UK-US technology partnership. A word of caution belongs here, because it is the honest way to read these numbers: these are announcements, not delivered spend, and at least one industry analysis has flagged the gap between what gets announced and what actually breaks ground. Treat them as a direction of travel for contractor demand, not a guaranteed order book.

Behind the data centres sits the grid itself. In April 2025 Ofgem approved NESO's connection reform package, replacing the old first-come-first-served queue with a "first ready, first needed, first connected" model. The queue held around 770GW of capacity, far more than a 2030 clean-power system needs, and NESO aimed to issue its 2030 connection offers by early 2026. The practical effect is that high-voltage and grid-connection capability is being repriced as the queue clears for the projects that will genuinely build.

You can see that repricing in the deal market. In May 2026, Triton-backed OCU Group acquired Athena PTS, a Cumbrian firm delivering power-systems engineering and contestable infrastructure up to 132kV. OCU turned over £886.5m in the year to April 2025 and is mapping a path to £1bn. When an infrastructure-backed platform buys 132kV capability rather than building it, that tells you what the market values: certificated, deliverable capacity against pipelines the buyer has already won.

That deal did not happen in isolation. Compliance-led testing and certification groups have been acquiring at pace through 2026: PTSG added Testing Services (UK) in March and BDS Group in May, and an active consolidator like Phenna Group reached a seventh acquisition of the year on top of the twenty-five it made the year before. The direction is consistent, testing, inspection and high-voltage capability is being bought rather than built.

The point for a seller is that this demand only converts into value through compliant, certificated delivery. A firm with a live NICEIC or NAPIT registration, an EICR and fixed-wire testing book, and framework positions is selling a buyer access to structural demand in a form they can bank. Project turnover on its own has never commanded the same premium.

Force TwoThe Funding Reset: Electrification Repriced

The second force is quieter but tells you where installed-base value is heading. From 1 April 2026 the government simplified its electric-vehicle chargepoint grant portfolio, and the numbers moved in the installer's favour.

The maximum grant rate rose from £350 to £500 per socket across the residential, landlord and Workplace Charging schemes, and five schemes were extended to 31 March 2027. At the same time, three schemes closed to new applications on 31 March 2026, including the EV Infrastructure Grant for small and medium-sized businesses. The Workplace Charging Scheme now covers up to 75 per cent of purchase and installation cost, capped at 40 sockets per applicant, with landlords able to claim up to 200.

Buyers do not price the grant. They price the installed base and the maintenance obligations that follow it for the next decade.

The reason a grant reset matters to your valuation is not the grant itself, which comes and goes. It is what the funding underwrites. Every charge point installed becomes an inspection, testing and maintenance obligation, and that recurring tail is what an acquirer pays a premium for. The same logic runs through solar, battery storage and heat electrification. On NESO's Future Energy Scenarios, UK electricity demand is projected to rise by around 9 to 17 per cent by 2030 and by roughly 94 to 134 per cent by 2050 as transport, heat and industry electrify, and the National Infrastructure Commission expects heat pumps and EVs to add around 66 GW to peak demand by 2050.

Those are long-range figures, and I quote them as ranges precisely because that is how the source presents them. The message for a seller is simple. A business with an installed base of charge points, solar or storage, and the maintenance contracts that go with it, is selling exposure to a demand curve that only points one way. That is worth more to a buyer than the same turnover earned on one-off installs.

Force ThreeThe Tax Reset: BADR at 18% and a New Inheritance Tax Cap

April 2026 rewrote two of the tax rules that matter most to business owners, and both reward doing the arithmetic early rather than late.

Business Asset Disposal Relief is now 18 per cent. The staircase is complete: 10 per cent before April 2025, 14 per cent for the 2025-26 tax year, 18 per cent from 6 April 2026. The relief still applies to the first £1m of qualifying lifetime gains, with the excess taxed at the main 24 per cent rate. The two-year qualifying conditions still apply, and it is the completion date of your sale that fixes the rate, not the day you shake hands.

The rise has already happened, so the deadline framing you may have read last spring is finished. What remains is a quieter calculation: BADR at 18 per cent is still worth up to £60,000 on a full £1m gain compared with the main rate, and the gap between 18 and 24 per cent is the narrowest it has ever been. Whether that gap narrows further is a matter for future Budgets; the direction of travel since 2024 has run one way.

The second change is less discussed and, for owners of larger businesses, arguably more significant. From April 2026, 100 per cent Business Property Relief from inheritance tax applies only to the first £2.5m of combined business and agricultural assets. Above that, relief halves to 50 per cent, an effective 20 per cent inheritance tax rate on the excess. The cap was originally announced at £1m and raised to £2.5m in December 2025; it is transferable between spouses and civil partners, so a couple can shelter up to £5m. HMRC estimate around 1,100 estates a year will pay more as a result.

Here is why that matters to an exit decision. For years, one perfectly rational plan was to hold the business for life and pass it on free of inheritance tax. For estates above the new cap, that plan now has a price attached. None of this is tax advice, and the right answer depends entirely on your circumstances; the point is that the question deserves an hour with your accountant this year, not eventually.

Force FourThe Talent Squeeze: The Team Is the Asset

Every electrical business owner knows recruitment is hard. Fewer stop to work out what that difficulty does to the value of the team they already have.

The demand side keeps growing while the supply side shrinks. The ECA reported in February 2026 that electrical apprenticeship starts had fallen by 5.5 per cent despite rising sector demand, and that fewer than one in five learners on government-funded, classroom-based electrical courses progressed into an apprenticeship or skilled employment over 2024-25. Skills England estimates, reported by the ECA, that the UK will need around 12,000 more electricians by 2030 even as work-based entry routes narrow.

A buyer can copy your rate card and win your next tender. What they cannot do quickly is assemble a JIB-graded team that turns up on Monday.

Acquirers understand this arithmetic, which is why engineer headcount, certification coverage and staff retention now feature so prominently in due diligence. A business with a stable, JIB-graded workforce holding current 18th Edition competence brings a buyer the one input they cannot source on demand. Conversely, a business where the certifications, client relationships and know-how all sit with the departing owner will see that reflected in the offer, however healthy the order book looks.

The practical opportunity sits in the 12 to 24 months before a sale. Documented training records and registration currency, sensible retention arrangements for key electricians, a second tier who can run contracts without you, and clarity on how staff transfer under TUPE: none of this is glamorous, but it turns a national skills shortage from a daily frustration into your strongest negotiating card.

Pulling It TogetherWhat the Four Forces Mean for Your Timing

Set the four forces side by side and the shape of the moment becomes clear. Infrastructure demand is being underwritten by the grid and the data-centre pipeline, so the sector growth story is strong. The funding reset around electrification is steering value towards installed bases and their maintenance tails. The tax environment, while less generous than it was, is settled and still favourable relative to the main rates, and the new inheritance tax cap has given larger owners a fresh reason to review their plans. And the skills gap means a certificated, retained team has never counted for more in a buyer's model.

It is worth grounding all of this in what businesses actually change hands for. On the sector's own published ranges, mixed installation and testing firms with NICEIC or NAPIT registration and moderate recurring revenue trade at around 3x to 5x EBITDA; specialist testing and inspection businesses with framework positions and retained teams sit closer to 4.1x to 4.6x; and operators with more than half their revenue in testing, established framework positions and teams of thirty or more qualified engineers reach 5x to 7x. Where a business lands is driven far more by revenue quality and workforce than by anyone's negotiating skill in the room. These are market observations rather than a promise for your own business, but they show how directly the four forces feed the number.

None of this says you should sell now. It says you should know what your business is worth now, because the conditions that determine that number are unusually well aligned, and because every sensible exit decision starts from an honest baseline rather than a guess. Whether you act this autumn or in three years, the preparation is the same: deepen the testing and inspection book, keep every registration current, reduce the business's dependence on you, and understand your tax position while the rules are fresh.

None of it commits you to anything. It simply tells you what your options look like, and options are the one thing you cannot create in a hurry once a buyer is at the table.