Due to a lack of supply and sky-high rents in the capital young technology companies are forced to find office space on the outskirts of the capital.
Many technology companies in London have gravitated toward Hoxton, Clerkenwell and Shoreditch, however much of the office space in these areas is now being turned into residential space.
The roundabout at the junction of City Road and Old Street in London is now known as Silicon Roundabout because of the prevalence of technology companies in the area.
As of July 2023, there were over 200 flex space providers in London that operated flexible office space and workspace solutions that offered agile alternatives to leased office space. See profiles of the providers of Flexible Workspace in London
As of 2010, there were approximately 85 technology startups in the area, including Tinker.it, Trampoline Systems, AMEE, Skimbit, Fotango, Techlightenment, Kizoom, BrightLemon and Redmonk.
Daniel Waterhouse, a partner at venture capital firm Wellington Partners, said that the attention Silicon Roundabout was attracting could make things even harder for startups to find office space.
Referring to the lack of office space, Conversocial Ltd founder Joshua March told Bloomberg: “Most of us still haven’t found proper office space.”
Conversocial is a company which advises businesses on how to use social media. After being expelled from its SoHo office a few months ago the company is still looking for new office space.
Prime Minister David Cameron has said he wishes to turn London into a technology hub akin to Silicon Valley in order to make the capital less reliant on the financial services industry.
According to commercial real estate outfit Cushman & Wakefield, the technology sector in London made up 11 per cent of all commercial property leasing during the last five years and currently employs approximately 400,000 people.
Editor’s notes: In 2022, the technology, media and telecoms (TMT) sector) made up 17 per cent of the office leasing activity in Central London which was down from its 2021 peak of 29 per cent. The total take up of office space was 10.1 million square feet so the TMT sector took up 1.72 million square feet.
The total take-up in East London which includes districts such as Shoreditch and Hoxton was 614,000 square feet.