I'm an experienced senior manager in facilities related services (more and more general management and continuous improvement cycles)i.e. have a broad range of skills. Been working in insurance, banking, telecoms, call centre, airline and mission critical environments over the last 15 years across EMEA managing operating budgets in excess of $25m. Interested in starting to investigate consultancy work as a freelance. Very few offers out there, can't seem to break into it. Anyone got any hints on where to get a foothold?

No reason you can't start your own niche consultancy and utilise your own contacts and industry experience. If this sounds unlikely, then look through the "experienced hires" sections of the countless consultancies out there to see if your skills set might be useful for their posts. Freelancing, as far as I'm aware, is more of a possibility if you have very specialist knowledge (e.g. realted to IT) which a comapany might outsource.