London is the world capital of spying. What Berlin was to espionage during the Cold War, so London is today.
But spooks need floorspace, just like everyone else. Hush-hush sources estimate that around 1.5m sq ft of London space is occupied by British spies and quasi-spies, with a further ?500,000 sq ft or more accounted for ?by foreign spooks.
In addition, there is a sprawling portfolio of garages, communications centres, “watcher” outposts and safe houses occupied by the UK’s secret agencies, including MI5, MI6 and the new National Crime Agency.
Together, they make up a covert London property market with all the deals, trades, disposals and acquisitions of the normal property market. Only you’ll never see it. Probably.
Dan Lovatt, associate director at Deloitte, is one of those who have had a glimpse. In 2007, he was asked to sell a garage in Streatham.
The 42,500 sq ft premises at 512-522 Streatham High Road was, on the face of it, just a run-down garage. But it was in fact the former home of the MI5 transport department, once upon a time full of fake post office vans, souped-up milk floats and anonymous estate cars.
“Yes, we knew it was ex-MI5,” recalls Lovatt. “I think a lot of people cottoned on, thanks to the internet. The result was we had a lot of viewings. My impression was they were mostly bidders, but we had a few more chancers than usual.”
In the end, the excitement for Lovatt was not the spy link, but the red-hot ?self-storage market of the boom years. Competitive bidding from self-store operators meant it sold for over £6m – a handy boost to the espionage budget.
A close observer of the world of secret property, who declined to be named, told EG: “It’s musical chairs. One property gets disposed of, like the Streatham garage, and another gets acquired.”
British spooks have long-standing relationships with some property businesses – but they’d have to kill us if we said who they were. What we can say is that London’s secret property market is churning, rather than expanding and, thanks to new inter-departmental partnership arrangements, it may even be shrinking.
There have been no new requirements from the security services for the past three years, and none is believed to be in prospect. This is despite a £100m-a-year funding increase from 2015 and some dated and increasingly inefficient buildings, both of which might have ?been expected to prompt senior management’s desire for new premises (see panel right).
Replacing a spy building can be expensive. Perhaps that is why it isn’t happening much. Most properties are freehold, which is simply good estate management, not a desire to get on with strange things without snooping landlords, EG has been told. And the properties can also be physically complicated, pushing up build costs.
Terry Farrell’s 1992 building Vauxhall Cross, home to MI6 since it left ?Century House, in Lambeth, is said, with ?a wink, to be built to last and includes five-storey basements.
The Government Property Unit has ultimate control of spook property requirements, just like all other government property, but that control is believed to be more formal than real.
Perhaps surprisingly, much of the portfolio is no secret – www.secret-bases.co.uk mentions many, and does so with the tacit approval of the intelligence community. But for the rest, mum’s the word, OK? London’s secret property market is likely to remain secret for a long time yet.
National crime agency
The creation of the National Crime Agency is expected to reduce the amount of secret floorspace in London, rather than increase it.
Its main predecessor, the Serious and Organised Crime Agency, operated officially from PO Box 8000, but was in fact based at Citadel Place, Tinworth Street, Vauxhall. It has now been merged with other agencies and a training function.
One source close to the intelligence community says: “NCA estate reorganisation is more likely to lead ?to a net reduction in space than a ?new requirement.”
Geographically, they cluster in SW1, where GCHQ has its London outpost, and around Vauxhall Bridge, where the NCA and MI6 (or SIS, the Secret Intelligence Service) sit on one side of the river, opposite MI5 (The Security Service) at Thames House, Millbank.
The Vauxhall spy community will soon be getting cosier with the arrival of the American Embassy at Nine ?Elms, an area that already has connections with the secret world thanks to the presence of the Government Car and Despatch Agency (despatching documents, not people, ?in case you wondered).
The outliers include various MI5 operational functions scattered round south London, and the National Border Targeting Centre is, sensibly, at Heathrow. Mayfair, once a prime spook haunt, is now little used.
Spooky history
Visitors to DTZ’s Mayfair HQ may not realise they are stepping into spy history.
Formerly known as Leconfield House, 1 Curzon Street, was the London centre for MI5 until 1974, and shared the role with the anonymous grey office block above Euston Square Underground station, 140 Gower Street, until 1994.
Today, after a thorough refurbishment, the gun emplacements pointing towards Hyde Park are gone, as is most of the famous underground “citadel” – a wartime bunker subsequently transformed into a spy training centre specialising in espionage trade craft.
DTZ has a basement meeting room named the Fleming Room, perhaps in honour of the James Bond author and the building’s spooky past.
Where to find spies
Geographically, they cluster in SW1, where GCHQ has its London outpost, and around Vauxhall Bridge, where the NCA and MI6 (or SIS, the Secret Intelligence Service) sit on one side of the river, opposite MI5 (The Security Service) at Thames House, Millbank.
The Vauxhall spy community will soon be getting cosier with the arrival of the American Embassy at Nine Elms, an area that already has connections with the secret world thanks to the presence of the Government Car and Despatch Agency (despatching documents, not people, in case you wondered).
The outliers include various MI5 operational functions scattered round south London, and the National Border Targeting Centre is, sensibly, at Heathrow. Mayfair, once a prime spook haunt, is now little used.
