Central London is still proving to be a popular place to start a business, probably even more now as construction of office buildings hits an eight-year high. This discovery comes after many worried about the effects of Brexit on the city.
The amount of office space being built around the capital stands at 14.8 sq ft over 120 projects. This is 4% rise from six months ago, before the Brexit vote. It was warned that the industry would 
start to withdraw operations from London because of the uncertainty after the vote to leave the EU.
Chris Lewis, head of occupier advisory at Deloitte Real Estate has said that the figures show that the capital is resilient. He said: “Brexit is just one of the components around occupier demand and take-up – the other elements include the broader economic uncertainty. London is home to international businesses and, with big elections in the US and mainland Europe as well, there is the potential for quite a lot of change and disruption.
“London is massively resilient. The considerations around what an occupier does is about more than Brexit, it’s just one of the things in the melting pot.”
One significant project that has been approved since the EU vote is the 62-storey 22 Bishopgate which will be the tallest building in the City of London.
Has Brexit had any impact?
Though the city’s construction projects haven’t been hit too hard, there is evidence to suggest that Brexit has had an impact. The amount of construction projects over the past six months has dropped by 42%, compared to the previous six months.
Only two of 40 projects started in the past six months have a business signed up to use them.
Businesses avoiding London
It has generally been accepted that more businesses are looking to avoid London due to rising costs of property and wages. This has become more of an issue since changes to business rates were announced earlier this year.
The government announced that the way business rates are worked out will be changing, meaning that the smallest businesses will be paying less or even nothing at all.
Businesses in London are facing the opposite effect. As business rates are worked out by the rentable value of a property, having a business property in London naturally means bigger rates to pay. This year the Valuation Office Agency (VOA) has done a revaluation of these rentable values and because property in London has increased, so will the business rates.
However, this new information paints a different picture, highlighting that London is still highly sought-after for commercial property.