UK Office Space Hotspots

While London, the Home Counties and major conurbations such as Birmingham and Manchester remain, understandably, among the most popular commercial property locations, research by officebroker.com has revealed a number of surprise serviced office hotspots across the UK.

Darlington, Falkirk and Newport are among a number of smaller towns and cities which are seeing a high demand for serviced office space, according to the UK’s largest online provider of commercial office space, officebroker.com.

Launched five years ago by entrepreneurs Jim Venables and Andy Haywood, officebroker.com has grown into a multi-million pound enterprise with offices in the UK and US, and plans to launch a division in Hong Kong in 2007.

Research by the company, which works with more than 90% of the UK’s serviced office space providers and landlords, has revealed that Sheffield, Aberdeen, Stockport, Coventry and Derby are also proving to be among the most desirable locations as far as office space is concerned.

officebroker.com carried out the research based on its own brokerage data from the past 12 months. Group turnover during the period April 2006 to April 2007 is expected to be in excess of £3.5 million.

The company looked at the top ten serviced office space hotspots by number of offices let, percentage revenue achieved and the percentage number of total deals.

As expected, in terms of total number of offices let, London (W1 and EC), Birmingham and Manchester made it into the top five along with Reading, which remains desirable because of its location on the M4 silicon corridor. Edinburgh, Guildford and Coventry also made it into the officebroker.com top ten based on total offices let during the 12 month period.

As far as percentage revenue was concerned Reading took the number one spot, followed by West London (W1), the City (EC), Central London (WC), Uxbridge and Birmingham.

As a percentage of total deals, Birmingham took the number one spot, proving the UK's second city is still a popular choice for businesses.

Surprising Hotspots

However, it is when calculating revenue against total number of deals done that an interesting picture begins to emerge. This reveals a number of perhaps unexpected yet highly desirable office locations including Darlington, Aberdeen, Derby, Stockport, Falkirk and Newport.

According to Daniel Baldwin, North East Sales Manager for officebroker.com, the demand for office space in the Darlington area can be attributed to a number of factors including its location on the A1 corridor and the natural beauty of the surrounding area. There is also a strong call centre culture in the area and staff recruitment and retention levels are high when compared to national averages.

His comments are backed up by Trudy Hines of Evans Easyspace who manages business centres in both Darlington city centre and on the outskirts of the city in Newton Aycliffe.

She said: “As well as being highly accessible, Darlington is popular because it is in the north east - an area which is renowned for supporting new business start-up’s. Evan’s Easy Space is popular here because we attract companies looking for flexible office solutions with low start-up costs and short term contracts.”

“Both of our office sites are very popular and officebroker.com’s pro-active marketing and sales support provides us with a steady stream of prospective tenants from all over the UK.”

Falkirk in Scotland emerged as another high revenue, high demand location. Willy Fergusson who manages the Haypark Business Centre explains that a combination of Falkirks highly accessible central Scotland location and the areas shortage of smaller conventional leases in the area both contribute to its success.

He said: “Falkirk is in the centre of Scotland and a major thoroughfare between its main cities - Glasgow and Edinburgh. The area boasts great rail links and is only ½ mile from the M9 motorway and 1 mile from Edinburgh airport. There seems to be a shortage of quality smaller, leased office accommodation in this area so people looking for space from 150 – 1000 sq ft tend to come to us or other serviced office providers in the area.”

Reading’s popularity as an office space location shows no signs of waning and is the UK’s number one office space destination as a percentage of total revenue.

Darlington is popular because it is...an area renowned for supporting new business start ups

Trudy Hines, Area Manager Evans Easyspace

Shirley Shepherd, Centre Manager at serviced office provider Business Environment Reading, says: “officebroker.com’s results come as no surprise to us. Reading is the heartbeat for business in the Thames Valley area and offers a great source of skilled people especially in high tech and IT roles. It’s all here – the transport links to London and Heathrow, good quality accommodation, great shops, great bars, great nightlife, lots of hotels – anything a business could want from a location.”

She adds: “Our company in particular benefits from a high number of ‘business start-up’s’ looking to take accessible, quality serviced office space with no hassle or long term obligation.”

Managing Director Jim Venables said: “Landlords looking to let space in these or any other area in the UK can contact officebroker.com for national and regional sales and marketing support.”

See this article in the press:

Northern Echo(SW Durham Edition)

Property Executive North