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 outperform its nearest competitors, Bristol (545,000 square feet) and Birmingham (534,000 square feet),” 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 square feet 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.
In 2025, Manchester total take-up through lease deals was 1.14 million square feet.
Birmingham’s total was 651,507 square feet; Bristol’s was 604,119 square feet, Edinburgh’s was 492,829 square feet, Glasgow’s was 438,158 square feet and Leeds’s full-year take-up was 625,646 square feet.
Office space take-up in Manchester during the second quarter of 2026 totalled 190,483 square feet through 48 letting deals. This brought the 2026 first-half total to 476,705 square feet, which was 18 per cent below H1 2025 but in line with the five-year H1 average.
A new headline rent of £48.00 per square foot was achieved at the ‘Island’ scheme when design and engineering consultancy Arcadis signed to rent 10,339 square feet, a 7 per cent increase on the previous £45.00 per square foot.
This deal meant prime rents in Manchester stood 11 per cent above the average prime rent of the Big Nine regional UK cities, outside London in the second quarter of 2026.
However, in Q3, Leeds achieved a headline prime office rent of £52.50 per square foot following a deal agreed by DAC Beachcroft at 31 Wellington Street.