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Take up of office space in the City is now at its lowest level since 2009, market research firm Equipe told City AM.
The last six months have seen no moves to offices larger than 50,000 square feet, according to the new research. Take-up in the last quarter was 834,000 square feet, down from the preceding quarter.
Many fear the UK’s faltering economic recovery is to blame for the slowdown in office uptake in the City.
However, other parts of the capital have done much better, bolstered by the take-up of office space by technology firms.
In particular, east central London has seen office space take-up in Farringdon rise by 125 per cent. According to the research, low rental prices in the area have boosted its popularity.
Overall office space take-up in central London has risen by six per cent. The West End saw take-up increase 22 per cent in the last quarter, mostly thanks to Google’s move to Central St Giles and Double Negative’s take-up of space at 160 Portland Place.
Meanwhile, the UK economy overall is still suffering. Data released on Wednesday showed that the labour market is much weaker than thought.
In the three months up to June, the unemployment level rose to 7.9 per cent, from 7.7 per cent in the preceding three months.
In July, a further 37,000 people signed up for jobless benefits, up more than 5,000 from the June figure.
Additionally, retail figures in July came in much weaker than expected, leading some to speculate that the lack of consumer spending could hurt the economy’s already limping recovery.
Editor’s notes: In 2022, the uptake of office space across Central London was 10.1 million square feet, which represented an increase of 18 per cent compared to the year before.
The take-up in the City of London in 2022 was 5.2 million square feet, which was 23 per cent higher than 2021’s 4.4 million square feet.
In the West End in 2022, office space uptake was 4.1 million square feet, up 7 per cent from 2021’s 3.8 million square feet.
The UK unemployment rate for February to April 2023 increased by 0.1 percentage points on the quarter to 3.8 per cent.
Colliers reported that City of London take-up fell to 1.1 million square feet in Q2 2026, 19 per cent below the ten-year average.
The firm also reported that Prime and Grade A space accounted for 74 per cent of transactions and new Grade A vacancy remained limited at just 1.2 per cent.
The UK unemployment rate for the period May to July 2026 stood at 4.9 per cent.