The post-pandemic conventional wisdom that London would be saddled with millions of sq ft of empty office space in the working from home era is now looking laughably wide of the mark.
As a new report today shows, the opposite is true.
The pipeline of new office schemes is in fact nowhere near full enough to meet the demand for extra new space from companies hauling their workers back into central London.
No wonder Stanhope are pressing ahead with their 1 Undershaft skyscraper project, which will deliver some 1.3 million sq ft of new work space when it finally completes around 2030. The City’s tallest building is almost certain to get the green light from Corporation planners, along with as many as 11 other towers grinding through the planning system.
Developers will have noted the success of the Bishopsgate twins, 22 and 8, which far from ending up as post-Covid white elephants, have filled rapidly with tenants hungry for the modern, employee friendly space they provide. The excess demand will inevitably put the squeeze on rents, in turn attracting more development proposals in the City, Docklands and elsewhere.
But where to put them? The so-called eastern cluster of skyscrapers is pretty much full if you include the schemes likely to get built over the next decade. Protected sightlines of St Paul’s and other historic buildings make it hard to plonk tall buildings elsewhere in the City.
But one of the great strengths of London — unlike some of its more museum-like European rivals such as Paris and Rome — is that there are plenty of ugly bits that can be knocked down or reinvented to make way for the new. So expect more cranes as the depleted office building pipeline fills up again to meet the demand.
The London skyline will once again be transformed with a new generation of tall buildings. That will not please everyone. But ceaseless reinvention is a key part of what make London such a compelling world city.
