Fladgate has the most expensive offices of any firm that provided data to this year’s UK 200: Workspace Trends 2016 (in association with JLL) report, The Lawyer can reveal.
The Covent Garden firm paid a total of £3.65m for its 39,750sq ft of space in central London last year, which works out as £91.80 per sq ft.
It is closely followed by pensions specialist Sackers, which pays £91.10 per sq ft and Ince & Co, which pays £82.90 per sq ft.
At the other end of the spectrum the firm with the lowest cost per sq ft is Somerset and Dorset’s Porter Dodson, which pays just at £4 per sq ft. Following just behind is east of England’s Roythornes, which pays £7 per sq ft and Fletchers, which is based in Southport, and pays £8.60 per sq ft. None of these firms have a London presence.
Three years ago it emerged in the UK 200 that Boodle Hatfield was paying the highest per square foot rent of any firm in the UK, at £91.50 for each of its 29,693 square feet.
The firm later moved to new offices at 240 Blackfriars Road in London’s Bankside but maintained its links with Mayfair with a significantly smaller office.
As a result Boodle Hatfield dropped well down the cost per sq ft ranking in 2015, with its real estate costs dropping to just £56.54 per sq ft. In this year’s report that cost had risen to £69.80.
Fladgate chairman Charles Wander said that the cost per square foot metric was only part of the picture.
“The way a firm’s offices are used, and revenue per foot, could be said to be a better measure,” added Wander.
“Our move to Covent Garden six years ago has been fantastic for the firm. Our offices, which were described by a design publication as ‘smart, welcoming, impressive’, have been a big contributor to our continuing success and the doubling of our turnover in this period. And, as our profitability demonstrates, we use our space efficiently and effectively.”
The average cost per sq ft across the entire UK 200 sample has increased over the past three years from £36.71 in 2014 to £38.93 in 2016.The percentage change on 2015 is 1 per cent and on 2014 it is 6 per cent – so there is a slowdown in the growth of average cost per square foot.
The majority of UK200 firms that provided property data (57 per cent) are paying less than £40 per sq ft while just over a third (36 per cent) are paying between £40 and £80 per sq ft. Only 6 per cent are paying more than £80 per sq ft.
The full report includes benchmarking data from 105 firms with a combined fee income of £4.4bn that are spending over £258m on 7 million square feet of offices in the UK.
To purchase the UK 200: Workspace Trends 2016 report contact Richard Edwards on 0207 970 4672 or at richard.edwards@centaurmedia.com
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