Senior Pay and Sentiment Survey 2027

The published salary surveys average the director of a £20 million builder with the leader of a billion-pound programme, and the better ones sit behind a form. Neither helps a director decide whether an offer is worth moving for, or a board set a package that will survive a counter-offer.

This survey asks only people at director, head-of and chief level, and cuts the answers by the programmes that are setting the market: Sizewell C, HS2, AMP8 and the New Hospital Programme, as well as by role, level and sector. It sits alongside the 2026 salary guide, which is built from the searches I run; this is the view from the people in the seats.

• Who it is for: directors, heads of function and chief officers in UK construction and infrastructure, at contractors, consultancies and client bodies alike.
• How long it takes: about five minutes. 20 questions, every one a tick, and pay asked in bands rather than figures.
• Anonymous: no name, no employer name, nothing that identifies you. An email for the results is optional and kept apart from your answers, with nothing to link the two.
• Free to read: the results go on this page in spring 2027, with no form to fill in first, and in The Lechley Brief.

Every result is a group of at least 10 people. A role, a programme or a region with fewer answers than that is left out of the results, and so is the next smallest group whenever leaving out one alone would let someone work it out from the totals. No answer is ever shown on its own, and no employer is named.

The answers are stored without your name, your employer, your IP address or the time you sent them. They are used for this survey and its write-up, and for nothing else. If you leave an email for the results, it goes into a separate list that has no link to your answers, and it is not added to the Brief. The Privacy Policy covers the rest.