Land Securities has joined forces with the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board to form the Victoria Circle Limited Partnership, which will radically redevelop part of SW1 in three phases over the next six years.
Land Securities will sell the fully let office buildings on the 5.5-acre site earmarked for the scheme in September 2012, the earliest date when demolition can begin.
“Victoria is changing, and the transaction is a great vote of confidence in our plans for this part of the West End,” said Robert Noel, managing director of Land Securities London portfolio.
“We are excited to be an investor in this transformative development project in a prime area of London’s West End,” added Graeme Eadie, Canada Pension Plan’s senior vice president for real estate investments.
The scale of the joint venture’s efforts around Victoria will see it deliver some 910,000 square feet of mixed-use property, including sizeable offerings of West End office space to rent, public amenities and retail units.
London’s West End was recently ranked as the second most expensive market in the world to rent office space, behind only Hong Kong. According to Cushman & Wakefield’s latest report, several Asian cities, most notably the Chinese capital, Beijing, saw rapid increases in the typical cost of renting office space throughout 2011.
Land Securities is among the largest office space owners in the UK, with a London portfolio that includes iconic buildings in the West End and in the City.
Editor’s notes: As of July 2024, the Victoria Circle development had not commenced. However, the development company was still trading.
Land Securities rebranded as LandSec in 2017 and had a combined asset value of £10 billion as of March 2024.
In May 2024, the company advised that it planned to deploy £1 billion over the next 12 months.
In August 2025, it was announced that Landsec had sold the building used as the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) London headquarters to the Arora Group for £245 million.
The property, formerly known as Queen Anne’s Mansions, is situated in Petty France, Westminster. Developed on a site between St James’s Park and St James’s Park Underground station, when it was completed in 1873, it was the tallest residential building in Britain at 14 storeys.
Queen Anne’s Mansions was demolished in 1973 and replaced by the office block known as 50 Queen Anne’s Gate and 102 Petty France.
Completed in 1976, the 550,000-square-foot office building was tenanted by the UK Home Office between 1978 and 2004. As of September 2025, it is home to several departments, including the Ministry of Justice, His Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service, the Crown Prosecution Service, and the Government Legal Department.
Billionaire hotel tycoon Surinder Arora owns the Arora Group.
Earlier in 2025, in April, it was reported that Mitsubishi Estate London had appointed agents to oversee the sale of 70 Petty France, a 92,000 square foot office building.
The building had also been occupied by the MoJ, as well as the Food Standards Agency. Leases at the property were due to expire during 2025, offering development potential.
In February 2026, it was reported that motorsports company Formula 1 (F1) had pre-let the entire nine-story 40 Broadway in St James’s Park.
On completion, the building, refurbished by Tellon Capital, would also feature roof terraces with views over St James’s Park, Buckingham Palace and the Houses of Parliament.
F1 will move from the other side of St James’s Park, at 2 St James’s Market, where it had occupied 21,000 square feet of space since 2017.