On 7th October 2025, several members of the Noise Network Plus Executive Board attended the launch of the UK Acoustics Sound Economics Report 2025 at Prince Philip House, London. The event was organised by The UK Acoustics Network Plus (UKAN+) and featured contributions from Professors Kirill Horoshenkov and Richard Craster, John Lincoln, Joanna Watts, and Abigail Bristow. We are proud to have contributed to producing the report, together with UKAN+, the Institute of Acoustics and the Association of Noise Consultants (ANC). Many thanks to everyone involved.
This report provides evidence of the growing economic and societal importance of acoustics as an enabling technology that underpins many sectors central to the UK’s prosperity, including healthcare, defence, energy, and construction and the built environment. In 2025, the UK acoustics industry produced goods and services worth £5.2 billion and employed 20,000 people across over 780 companies.
The report provides five recommendations:
1. Support a leadership body to convene industry, government and academia to spread awareness of industrial demand and advances in acoustics.
2. Work with the Department for Business and Trade to increase international awareness of UK acoustics capability as a national asset.
3. Conduct a review of UK acoustics capital infrastructure and access to key resources vital for expansion, e.g., in AI and machine learning.
4. Develop stronger collaboration between the professional bodies to which acoustics professionals affiliate, e.g., Institute of Acoustics, Institute of Physics, Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE), Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE), Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) and Audio Engineering Society, to ensure that acoustics is entrenched in design.
5. Provide broader opportunities for up-skilling of the acoustics workforce across all career stages and education levels.
You can read the report in full here: https://lnkd.in/e8GRqiDV.
The original 2019 report is available here: https://lnkd.in/eQV5YF2U.
