A study on the subject from Lambert Smith Hampton (LSH) reportedly shows that office space take-up in Manchester city centre has been higher this year than in cities like Bristol, Edinburgh, Leeds, and Glasgow.
London consistently outperforms all other British cities in terms of office space take-up but demand in the city centre and the Salford Quays areas has helped make 2011 a relatively strong year for the Greater Manchester market.
However, a turbulent and tough economic backdrop has seen average take-up of offices in Manchester and throughout the country struggle to beat last year’s performance or match the scale of deals being done earlier in the decade.
“The prevailing economic conditions have reduced occupational activity for the majority of the UK’s major provincial cities in 2011,” David Thwaites from the commercial property consultancy behind the research told the Manchester Evening News.
“Greater Manchester is on course once again to significantly out-perform its nearest competitors, Bristol (545,000 sq ft) and Birmingham (534,000 sq ft),” he added.
Toward the end of 2011, a number of large-scale and high-profile office leasing deals were made in Greater Manchester, including KPMG’s commitment to 70,000 sqft of space at One St Peter’s Square and Aegis’ agreement on offices at City Tower in the city centre.
Meanwhile, in Salford Quays, a number of new residents opened offices at MediaCityUK. However, the healthcare insurance group Bupa revealed it could soon relocate several hundred of its staff to offices outside the area.
Editor’s notes: In 2022, Manchester remained the largest UK office market outside of London, and the take-up of office space through office lettings deals totalled 1.2 million square feet, which was ahead of the 2021 total and in line with the 10-year average.
In the same year, Bristol’s annual take-up was 620,200 square feet, Edinburgh’s 660,700 square feet, Leeds’s 618,200 square feet, and a total of 409,200 square feet was rented in Glasgow.
In 2023, Manchester’s office space take-up fell just short of 1 million square feet at 946,000 square feet.
Bupa chose to stay in Salford Quays and opened its 65,000-square-foot, 6-storey HQ in 2018.