The chairman of the City of London Corporation’s planning and transport committee says the organisation’s built environment team is “leading by example” on the return to the office as it deals with a rapidly rising workload of development applications.
Speaking at the committee’s annual dinner, Shravan Joshi pointed to a 25% increase in applications received this year, as well as a similar-sized increase in decisions issued.
“Over 135,000 sq m of best-in-class grade-A office floorspace was granted permission or resolved to grant by the committee in the last 12 months,” he said.
“Added to this is the thousands more square metres of floorspace granted by officers under their delegated powers. The planning pipeline is in a healthy state with approximately 500,000 sq m in various stages of negotiation.”
Recently approved schemes include Schroders’ 55 Bishopsgate, Hertshten’s 85 Gracechurch Street and Dominus’s Friary Court redevelopment.
Joshi said the workload has proven the “resoluteness” of the corporation’s built environment team. “This is a team that will always meet stakeholders face-to-face and is leading by example on the return to office, with many of them back at Guildhall five days a week,” he said.
Joshi acknowledged that “not everyone agrees with our assessment of office space demand”, adding that he is “frequently asked for my views on the struggles of Canary Wharf and, across the Atlantic, New York City, to increase their occupancy rates”.
He denied seeing the City competing with either Canary Wharf or New York, instead emphasising that the locations are part of a global ecosystem, “whose success is dependent on each one of us thriving”, adding: “This is not a zero-sum game.”
“What we are seeing in Canary Wharf is a prioritisation and expansion into life sciences, tech and media, while some of their former legal and financial tenants return to us, where local infrastructure and amenities are more traditionally suited to them,” he said.
“New York is a city that has always had more of a balance between its resident and worker population and why the conversion of obsolete offices into family homes makes far more sense,” Joshi added. “Back here in the Square Mile, the reality is that only 9,000 people live here and while we may see that number rising, we will always remain primarily a business district.”
The latest Deloitte crane survey found new office starts in London at a record high, with the Square Mile home to 2.4m sq ft of office space starting across 16 schemes.
That stood in contrast to the West End, where new starts are falling. Marcus Geddes, chair of the Westminster Property Association, recently pointed to an “alarming” drop-off in major development applications in the borough.
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