London isn't Working

27 January 2024

I love London. I was born in central London, spent my early years in South London, moved to North London and have worked in around fifteen locations ranging from the iconic BBC offices to Somerset House, from tiny Georgian townhouses to Marble Arch monstrosities. I know London and London isn't working well right now.

London is Out of Office quite a lot - even the advertising gurus are cashing in at tube stations.

This is because 72% (as per @theflexindex UK data) of British corporates are now allowing "location flexibility" and nearly half are managed hybrid of 2-3 days per week. London, a city ring-fenced by a commuter belt has been hit hard by a working cohort of white collar workers who, young and old, despise the commute, want to take advantage where they can of teleconferencing and remote work technology, have lives they reconnected to during COVID which they don't want to abandon to work all week long and who have taken keenly to hybrid working.

Why the tension between bosses and workers?

Well it's partly managerial: hybrid is hard to manage, and new working patterns must be established. That's costly and challenging: not all managers have the skills. It's is not easy to manage workforces where some have no location flexibility and need to be in who have co/workers who can be hybrid: this ratchets up workplace resentments and tensions: what I call hybrid haves-versus-have-nots.

It is partly generational: big business, again as per Flex Index research - is much more resistant to flexible working than younger more agile ones with younger founders.

Now. London itself. A city built with several office-based centres, or CBDs (Central Business Districts) - in the case of London at least three pre-pandemic: City of London, Canary Wharf and Central London itself. The city is large so the "footprint" of "floorplate" for office leasing, rental and buyout is enormous: Central London alone has approx 300 million square feet of office stock and of course it's not all being used. It's shrinking. It's being repurposed.

Now there are good things happening: new shiny happy models like King's Cross which are "mixed use" with offices alongside retail, apartments, and family housing in a fairly green area: canals etc.

An uptick in local areas brimming with pop up co/working spaces and drop-in centres. But the Big London of old is in chaos - and in denial.

This has not been made easier by draconian anti car moves which, whilst perhaps laudable in intention - climate related and anti pollution - are prohibitively expensive for those who have to drive in as their commute or those who work with vans.

IN ADDITION….

In addition, we are still pre-drone: you need cars and vans to deliver to London and congestion, exacerbated by cycle lanes and fine/heavy 20MPH zones all exacerbate the exodus: who would travel into London to work now unless they absolutely have to?

Congestion charge and ULEZ charges are new. But London is an old city with old problems: look at The Central Line which takes 200 million passengers a year and is currently decimated by delays because the rolling stock engines are old and need to be replaced.

Then there is housing stock: we know how unaffordable it is for young people to get on the housing ladder and rent, let alone buy. We all know people moving out and away not because they want to but because they have to.

So this is a shifting time for a city like London - with old cobbles jostling with an aspiration which reality is not quite matching.

London is a good example of a commuter-based city facing a serious backlash to how it operates post pandemic. Corporates and Governments are speaking with forked tongues as they simultaneously slash office space and provide (despised) desk sharing whilst upping the ante to get people back to the office.

London is of course amazing. To play and hang out in, to absorb its culture on the streets and in museums and theatres. Hampstead Heath? Give it a UNESCO badge.

Yet today London is in an uneasy place. And that's without the escalation of stabbing and knife crime hitting the young in particular. thank God for Idris Elba turbo-charging attention around it and using his brand power.

London has brand. London IS a brand, so rightly spends a lot on fireworks and tourism, on London-based filming and television and glitz. But this doesn't fill the hole in revenue for transport, retail, hospitality.

Workers are not tourists. They are working de facto only half the time they did, give or take, in London.

What happens next?

Here’s my young grandson hurtling through a small local London park. London parks are a blessing. You can't work in them tho, most of the year it’s too wet and cold!

London needs a narrative about itself as a working city for new times not old. London needs to make everywhere it has an office a place which also has somewhere something else happens too other than retail - living. Families. Play. Rest. Medicine.

London needs to re-up its game and its game on to do so.

That's it. Agree? Disagree? Ideas?

You can always email me directly: julia@thenowhereoffice.com or find me on Linked In or X or Instagram. Usual places.

and don’t forget The Nowhere Office podcast!

Bon Weekend.

Julia