'London's future rests on connectivity'

MIPIM 2018: Unless London delivers world-class digital connectivity, the city will lose fast-growing businesses to other parts of the world, LendLease, WiredScore and Cluttons warned this week.

Speaking on a panel at MIPIM, Tom McClellan, who leads National Business Development for Wiredscore, said cloud computing had, over the past three or four years, fundamentally changed the way businesses operate. But he warned that no matter how good a city’s digital infrastructure, it was its impact on individual businesses that mattered most.

“Connectivity is ultimately a localised thing,” he said. “A city can be the best-connected city in the world, but what matters is whether a tenant in a particular building can get access.”

McCellan said digital connectivity would be a significant factor in keeping London attractive to footloose, global occupiers post Brexit.

“It’s about how we align interests in London and the UK to ensure nothing stops it from being something that can be overtaken. In the future, it is smaller companies driving growth that won’t want to be in London if the connectivity is not right.”

Connectivity

Lendlease’s head of offices, Sherin Aminossehe, said connectivity was a primary consideration for the developer as it sought to deliver projects in the capital.

“Building flexibility into infrastructure is critical,” she said. “Workplaces don’t stop at the edge of our buildings. We need to give flexibility to our users to work where they want and when they want.”

She said Lendlease was already applying this thinking in its development of Stratford’s International Quarter.

“In the future, it is smaller companies driving growth that won’t want to be in London if the connectivity is not right.”

She added that it would be applied at Lendlease’s £4bn regeneration of Euston, NW1, where it has been appointed master development partner. Connectivity, she said, would be an especially important factor in the development of the 133-acre station site, where Lendlease is looking at tapping into already-strong demand from the life sciences sector.

Cluttons’ head of telecoms, John Gravett, said the capital ranked 26th out of 30 European cities for connectivity. “It is a real problem for London,” said Gravett. “With Brexit on the horizon, that statistic needs to change. We’ve got to work hard to drive that connectivity.”

Accelerating pace of change

Gill Parker, chief executive of architectural and design practice BDG, said that the pace of change would need to accelerate as employers sought to meet employee demands for flexible working. Connectivity was also at the heart of improving productivity and ensuring the relevance of the office.

“Agility only works with true digital connectivity,” she said. “Some of the apps coming through now should enable employees to monitor temperature and noise so they can find areas of their building that suit them best as they seek to increase their productivity.

“If everybody goes home to work, we’ve got a lot of empty buildings.”

Building owners to take the importance of connectivity more seriously and would require a fundamental rethink of their offer to many business.

“As developers and landlords, we need to be upping our game a bit more,” said Aminossehe. “At the end of the day, the long institutional leases that we are stipulating are getting rarer and rarer. We need to be at the vanguard of that change.”

Other tenants would require educating, she said. Already, many occupiers demanded better digital infrastructure but failed to optimise its use. “What’s the point of having a big broadband pipe if you’re not going to use it?” she said.

“Think about the the strapline ‘London is open’,” said Aminossehe. “If communications are not open, what hope have we got?”