Largest volume of office space delivered in London since 2004

London saw more than 360,000m² of new office space complete in the last six months, delivering the largest volume of office space in central London for 13 years.

Shaun Dawson, author of the London Office Crane Survey at Deloitte, said: “The sheer volume of completed space is no surprise given the surge in development activity 18 months ago.

“In total, 480,000m² was completed in 2016 and this momentum has continued into 2017. We expect this year’s annual total delivery to be the highest since 2004.”

The City continues to dominate development activity with 10 new schemes totalling 176,000m² taking the City’s construction pipeline to 760,000m².

This represents a 7% decrease, but comes on the back of a number of large schemes having completed in the last six months.

Nigel Shilton, managing partner at Deloitte Real Estate, added: “The decrease in overall volume of space under construction could suggest that developers have slowed down, yet this is more a result of timing and two years of elevated levels of construction completing rather than developers holding off.

“Demolition levels remain high at 730,000m², which chimes with the sentiment of our surveyed contractors who expect a rise in workload over the coming 12 months. Looking at the development pipeline, we forecast around 3.6M square metres to be delivered by 2021. Very few schemes have been cancelled, highlighting continuing developer confidence.”