Avison Young’s South East quarterly office update reports on 10 towns across the region to give a comprehensive overview of the market.

Comprehensive maybe, but the market as a whole is characterised by a lack of consistency. It seems harder than ever to identify patterns in active seekers, even the size of deals, the quality of the specification and even active towns. Cambridge usually leads the way in terms of activity, but saw just one letting in Q1 followed by 9 deals in Q2; conversely, Crawley is one of the more challenging markets in the South East but saw 5 deals in Q1 (3 over 15,000 sq ft) followed by no deals in Q2.

The pandemic and lockdowns now fortunately seem behind us, but still the return to the office is sluggish. Corporates are struggling with the dilemma that they want to get their people together to be more productive but, with job vacancies at extremely high levels, they do not want to push them. Many people are not returning to the office as the daily cost of commuting is a further squeeze on income and when they are there, they don’t know who else will also be in the office. There is a tipping point but most businesses are not there yet.