Savills research shows 68 per cent of all office developments and extensive refurbishments set to complete in London’s West End in 2019 have already pre-let and only three schemes have enough speculative space to accommodate a requirement over 100,000 sq ft.

In 2018 alone we saw close to 1.5 million sq ft of new office space acquired prior to completion by a host of global businesses including Facebook, Sony and WeWork. Pre-letting activity resulted in another strong year of total annual take-up in the West End with 5.1 million sq ft of office lettings across 34 transactions – the second highest level of activity on record.

In a market increasingly reliant on pre-lets to satisfy demand, the West End continues to prevail despite the background political headwinds and uncertainty. The occupiers operating in our market are making office commitments based on corporate decisions and a supply/demand imbalance that appears to override any wider uncertainty on Britain’s decision to leave the EU.

In many ways it remains business as usual and this sentiment is already apparent in the first few months of 2019, with a good level of requirements and deals continuing to happen. While we are not seeing much rental growth in the West End, which could appear counter-intuitive to market fundamentals, this can partially be explained by the now-expected footloose nature of tenants across Central London meaning landlords are competing with a wider range of buildings than ever before. We shouldn’t kid ourselves though, no one is immune to the current political environment and most are at least creating ‘Plan Bs’ in light of the uncertainty.

As the year plays out we will be monitoring the level of tenant controlled space that is returned to the market and what effect this has. However, with supply levels low it is likely that any ‘grey space’ will be absorbed and the West End would welcome more announcements to commit to delivering more offices from the developers we know to be looking for opportunities.

Any new space in the pipeline is good news and developments that offer occupiers a point of difference through considered design will do well.

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