Month: February 2021

London serviced offices continue to keep the city well ahead of other major business centres in Europe, new data has revealed.

Serviced offices in London now account for as much as 7% of the capital’s total office space, according to figures published recently by Statista.

The research relates to the first quarter of 2020 and was published by Statista in February 2021, based on a report by BNP Paribas.

It shows that serviced offices in London comprise the fourth-largest specified use of floor space, behind professional services, banking & finance and media tech.

And the headline figure echoes previous estimates of the London serviced office sector, which is a leading light for the whole of Europe.

UK serviced offices out in front

This is not the only recent evidence to support the suggestion that London serviced offices are performing well in comparison with other cities on the continent.

In September 2020, we reported on an article in Property Journal in which Tom Sleigh put the serviced office sector across Europe at around 2% of floor space on average.

But he noted that in the UK, the figure is significantly higher:

• Serviced offices in Manchester account for approx. 4% of floor space.
• Serviced offices in London account for approx. 6% of floor space.

This new report from Statista backs up that claim for the capital, and suggests that London serviced offices may comprise even more of the city’s workspace than previously thought.

Doing more with London office space

With commercial real estate in London at a premium, it makes good sense for serviced office providers to occupy a growing percentage of the city’s workspace.

That’s because serviced offices in London allow more businesses to be based in a prime postcode like the Isle of Dogs, where the Serviced Office Company’s premises are located.

Serviced offices are an efficient use of available space:

• Companies can occupy an office only as big as they need.
• Multiple occupants can share access to meeting rooms in London’s CBD.
• Further businesses can be based elsewhere using virtual offices in London.

Virtual offices in London‘s most desirable districts mean there is theoretically no limit to the number of businesses that can have a postcode and geographical telephone number in the capital.

Yet the employees are not based there physically. Instead they work remotely and any correspondence is forwarded on for attention, supporting completely flexible modes of working.

Enquire about London serviced office space

If you would like to know more about our London serviced office space, including our recently opened Business Centre in the Millennium Quarter, please get in touch and we will be happy to answer your questions.

You can contact the Serviced Office Company:

• By phone on 0800 319 6600
• By email at info@servicedofficecompany.co.uk
• By filling in our online contact form

All enquiries are very welcome and we will respond to you as soon as a member of our team is available to give you a full answer to any questions you may have asked.

The predicted trend for businesses to work more from serviced offices in the post-pandemic period may be starting to emerge, according to a Birmingham-based serviced offices consultancy.

KWB Office help prospective tenants to match with available serviced office space across the West Midlands and have been saying since the start of the year that the second quarter of 2021 would be a positive time for the sector.

But director John Bryce now says the speed and scale of the upturn in demand for serviced office space has been surprising, even against those high expectations.

He adds that in the months ahead, even relatively large office-based businesses may move towards this more distributed model, supported by staff working from their own homes.

“If this momentum continues, and there’s no reason to think otherwise, I believe we’ll soon see companies which previously had 30,000 sq ft or even 40,000 sq ft looking to downsize and then use remote working – either from home or serviced offices – to create more flexible models,” he said.

Why adopt remote working post-pandemic?

March 23rd 2021 marks the one-year anniversary of the day UK employees were told to work from home if possible, as part of the first national lockdown of the Coronavirus pandemic.

Over the past 12 months, businesses have had to adapt quickly, multiple times to different guidelines, and those with smaller offices in multiple locations have had a natural advantage when it comes to putting staff into protective ‘bubbles’.

A small branch office is a natural bubble and, even if all the employees are forced to self-isolate due to a Coronavirus breakout, other offices are less likely to be affected.

With virtual offices, employees can also continue to work from home seamlessly, even if they are unable to attend the physical workplace due to self-isolation.

But why continue to adopt this practice as we move into the second half of 2021 and the vaccine roll-out reaches all UK adults?

Safeguarding the future with serviced offices

Even once everyone in the UK is vaccinated, there is still the risk of new variants of Coronavirus emerging in other countries around the world and bypassing the immunisation once they reach our population.

For the foreseeable future, it makes sense for businesses to adopt a risk-averse approach to large open workplaces, in favour of setting up smaller branch locations in serviced offices, as well as virtual offices for those who continue to work from home.

Serviced Office Company can support this, with multiple locations for our serviced offices in Manchester and London, as well as full virtual office services for correspondence forwarding and so on.

We hope businesses in the UK and abroad can get back to normal as soon as possible, with no more surprises in store, but we are also ready to adapt immediately if conditions change again before the pandemic is fully over.

If you would like to know more, contact us today, and we can help your business to take an optimistic but realistic view of the months and years that lie ahead, as we all emerge from this period of global lockdown.

Demand for office space in Manchester is likely to be driven in 2021 by businesses opening a ‘north shore’ for their operations and by serviced offices in Manchester and Salford, according to a Deloitte UK report.

The analyst’s Manchester Crane Survey 2021 notes that in 2020, 36% of office floor space under construction in the city was already pre-let.

“However, new workspace moves for businesses coming into either Manchester or Salford were delayed temporarily and occupation of let space is unlikely to be made until mid-2021 at the earliest,” it adds.

The report predicts that during 2021, further take-up of Manchester office space will be in serviced office buildings, as well as government departments and north-shoring businesses.

The big return to office life

The past 12 months saw offices up and down the UK affected by the COVID-19 restrictions, including changes to seating layouts, minimum distancing between employees and efforts to improve ventilation and cleanliness.

But the roll-out of Coronavirus vaccines means that in 2021, a return to more normality may be achievable – and the Deloitte UK report lists several advantages of office working that will entice employees back from working at home.

They include:

• An environment where ideas can be exchanged.
• A place for collaboration to take place.
• A way to support flexible working arrangements.

Deloitte adds: “To further incentivise a return to the workplace over the longer term, we may see physical and functional adaptations to allow for more focus on collaboration and opportunities for flexible working.”

Premises in the pipeline

Serviced offices in Manchester and Salford could see greater demand in 2021-22 due to a subdued pipeline of new premises in the post-COVID period.

At the end of 2020 there was 39% less office floor space under construction in Manchester, compared with the start of the year.

The number of new construction starts in 2020 was also down by two fifths, compared with the yearly average dating back to 2007.

As this feeds through into new office completions over the coming few years, businesses may instead look to Manchester serviced office providers for the floor space and flexible terms they need.

Combining physical and virtual offices

For businesses that want to continue a primarily home-based workforce, virtual offices in Manchester and Salford are an option, providing a professional public appearance for staff based at home – or anywhere else, for that matter.

The Serviced Office Company operate virtual offices in Salford Quays from our physical serviced office buildings on Clippers Quay and Exchange Quay, as well as on the Isle of Dogs in London.

Combined with meeting rooms for hire on the premises, this gives you everything you need to set up a virtual northern branch, operate a mixed-mode workforce with employees in-person and others at home, and grow your business as the economy bounces back post-COVID.

For more information about renting serviced office space in Manchester or London, email us at info@servicedofficecompany.co.uk, call us on 0800 319 6600, or fill in our online enquiry form and we’ll get back to you as soon as possible.

Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak has told Politico that small serviced offices have the potential to cut commute times and allow people to work ‘from home’ without actually being in their own home.

He told the politics site’s Westminster Insider podcast about the rise of neighbourhood serviced offices in Brooklyn in the USA, which are providing that kind of hybrid between being home-based and commuting into the office.

This supports individuals who want to reduce their commute without going fully home-based, and may also have implications for other parts of the economy such as traffic levels and local businesses within the neighbourhood.

Mr Sunak said: “A new thing that’s growing up in New York – actually, this was in Brooklyn – was a new business model of serviced offices, but in neighbourhoods, and very small. So it’s for people who are not doing the commute in, but they don’t wanna work at home when they’re doing their days at home.

“So you can leave your home and do, essentially, working in your neighbourhood rather than making the full commute into work, which is an interesting model to see whether that picks up.”

Will local serviced offices be the new normal?

‘The new normal’ is an often used term to describe what will happen after the Coronavirus pandemic ends, and particularly which of the practices picked up during lockdown will continue for the long term.

Mr Sunak tackled this too, saying: “Is it gonna come back in exactly the same way? Probably not, and actually even small changes have quite big implications, whether it’s for the economics of commuter rail or a coffee shop that’s used to servicing commuters.

“If people work one day a week on average at home and everyone does that, that’s 20% less commuting traffic. That’s not a small impact.”

Again, neighbourhood serviced offices could be the trend that allows this to happen, as businesses set up a number of small branch offices in different parts of the country, with isolated pockets of employees who live within a short distance of each branch.

How the Serviced Office Company can help

We have believed for a long time in the benefits of local serviced offices in key communities in both the north-west and south-east.

Our serviced offices in London are located adjacent to Canary Wharf, putting employees a stone’s throw from the business heart of the capital.

Up north, our serviced offices in Manchester are found on Exchange Quay and Clippers Quay, conveniently located between Manchester city centre and the ever-growing business district of Salford Quays and MediaCityUK.

All are well serviced by road and by public transport, helping to cut commute times for employees who come into the office, whether it’s for one day a week or five.

We believe firmly in the future of this neighbourhood serviced office model, with the flexibility of on-site meeting rooms for interviews and negotiations, when you need a private space to meet with an applicant, customer or stakeholder.

To find out more about how your business can adopt the Brooklyn model, contact us today and we will do our best to answer any questions you might have about our local serviced offices.