Office Space in London

Choosing the location of your office is a fundamental decision in any business, and can often make a huge difference to the success or failure of the company. Often businesses within a specific sector have a tendency to locate themselves close to one another which is often due to efficiencies created. As an example

North West London is home to Park Royal, one of the biggest concentrations of food manufacturing, and food related businesses in the UK. The food industry, by its nature, has special requirements in its transport and distribution in that they often have a chill or frozen element to them.

Working through your exact logistical production to customer product movements requirement can help you narrow down the areas that would best suit your business in terms of cost, and easy access to market. Other things to think of are the commute of your staff, or availability locally of staff suitable for your line of industry, and whether or not your clients will be visiting your business, or you go to them. When looking at renting office space London has a huge range of pricing, from as low as six per square foot per year, to over a hundred per square foot. You may just want pure office space, or have a production / storage area included. Outside of the rent, you need to consider rates and service charges for the building. The rates, as set by the local authority, can vary substantially from one location to the next. Often business parks that have been built in developing areas are designated with much lower rates that in other areas of the same authority. Next, the service charge needs to be considered in terms of both it’s present value, and it’s ability to change. Within a commercial lease, each tenant is responsible for their section of the upkeep of the entire building that they are renting in. This is usually a pro rata rate linked to the amount of square footage of your area, in comparison to the total area of the building. Any areas that are unrented count as the landlords own expense. It is very often common that a landlord will wait until he has rented all space within a building, to start renovation works which drive up the service charge quite dramatically. In situations like this, at the start of a tenancy, it is very important to cap what can be charged in the service charges. The presence of a lift in a building will always have a large expense within the service charge. If your business is quite power hungry, there may be restrictions on how much power you can actually draw, and you might have to go to the expense of having to lay your own cable to the nearest transformer station, which can be a very costly exercise.

In commercial leases, it is normal for the tenant to have to apply to the land lord for any alterations they would like to do to the office space they are taking, and these licenses to alteration often have clauses stating that the tenant is responsible for putting the office space back into its original condition at the end of the lease. It is often a good idea to get the landlord involved in the design stage, and have them happy to accept the fit out thus removing the need to have it removed at the termination of the lease period.

So, as can be seen, there is more to the decision than meets the eye.