Defining the Facilities Industry
‘Facilities' is the collective term for a group of sub-sectors which offer support services for the creative media.
The Facilities sector is made up of around 1,100 companies employing between them 17,000 people. About 35% of the industry is freelance and around 25% are women.
The main sub-sectors within the facilities sector are:
- Outside Broadcast
- Studios and Equipment Hire
- Post Production, including graphics and audio for video
- Special Physical Effects - Physical effects, miniatures, pyrotechnics etc
(‘Facilities' also includes processing laboratories; transmission; manufacture of Audio Visual equipment; and other services for film and TV; however the research data collected below refers specifically to the five sub-sectors above only).
Post production, including audio for video
The 2006 Skillset census recorded 546 post production companies employing 7,800 staff, with an average of 14 staff per business.
According to earlier Skillset research, in 2002 this sub-sector employed 7,000 staff across 230 companies. These figures indicate the number of businesses in this sub-sector has almost doubled but that the workforce has only increased by around 10%. This would support comments made by members of the industry in the consultation for the Facilities Strategy, which pointed to an explosion of small boutique businesses opening, many of which are started up and staffed by people leaving the larger post production houses.
Special Physical Effects
This sub-sector uses a closely woven mixture of sculpture, engineering and photography to achieve the finished product.
According to the Skillset 2006 survey 90 special physical effects companies employ around 1,450 staff. Even more so than the other sub-sectors special physical effects relies heavily on freelance staff, with 39% of the workforce employed on a freelance basis.
Outside Broadcast (OB)
According to Skillset's 2006 census, this sub-sector is comprised of 53 OB companies, employing around 600 staff. OB is heavily reliant on freelance staff and busy periods fluctuate greatly around major events and sports, such as the Olympics.
Studios and Equipment Hire
The Skillset 2006 census recorded 490 employers in this sub-sector, who provide work for 7,000 people. Of these, 32% were freelance.
Compared to the rest of the Facilities sector employees and freelancers in this sub-sector work longer hours for less pay. Staff in this sub-sector have the lowest average incomes of £31.1K (compared with £34.7K average for the rest of the facilities sector), and have an average working day of 10.1 hours (compared to an average of 9.8 hours for the rest of the sector). This sub-sector also has fewer graduate employees, at 52%, than the facilities sector as a whole (59%).
For more information on our research work, please visit Skillset's Research pages.