Ask anyone what an office costs and they’ll quote you rent per square foot. That’s like pricing a car by its tyres.

So what does an office really cost per employee in the UK? A desk in a new central London office costs more than £21,000 a year per person once rent, business rates, service charge and fit-out are added up. In the big regional cities it’s roughly 40% less, so about £12,600.

And that’s just the bit on the invoice. There are two more costs nobody bills you for: the desks sitting empty most of the week, and the commute your team does to reach them.

Let’s go through all three. First, the short version.

Key numbers

How much does one office desk cost in the UK?

One desk in a new central London office costs more than £21,000 a year once rent, business rates, service charge and fit-out are added up, according to Lambert Smith Hampton’s Total Office Cost Survey. A serviced desk is cheaper: £400 to £700 a month in London and £280 to £400 in Manchester, Birmingham and Leeds (Level Workspace, 2026).

Here’s what actually goes into that £21,000.

The full bill looks more like this, using figures from K2 Space’s 2026 guide to UK office costs:

• Rent: prime City of London rents hit £130.80 per sq ft in early 2026 (Savills data). Birmingham and Bristol reached £52.

• Business rates: a new 50.8p multiplier applies to offices with a rateable value of £500,000 or more from April 2026. On a good London floor, rates can add £30 per sq ft or more.

• Service charge: often £12 to £18 per sq ft a year on a modern multi-let London building.

• Fit-out: around £80 to £120 per sq ft for a straightforward Cat B fit-out, spread across the lease.

• Space per person: modern offices plan for roughly 80 to 100 sq ft per desk.

Add it all up and the all-in annual cost of a new Mayfair workstation comes to “more than £21,000 a year”, according to Lambert Smith Hampton’s Total Office Cost Survey as reported by K2 Space. The Big Six regional cities run “around 40 percent below central London per desk”. That’s how I get my £12,600: £21,000 minus 40%. Treat it as a rough guide, not a quote.

Most small teams don’t sign ten-year leases, though. They rent desks. According to Level Workspace, London serviced desks currently cost £400 to £700 per desk per month. Manchester, Birmingham and Leeds are typically £280 to £400. That’s £4,800 to £8,400 a year per person in London, before you’ve bought a single biscuit.

What is the Empty Desk Tax?

The Empty Desk Tax is the money a business spends on office desks that nobody sits in. On a typical two-day hybrid pattern, about £6 in every £10 spent on desks pays for an empty chair, and UK offices averaged just 38.1% occupancy in May 2025 (Remit Consulting).

Here’s the line I can’t stop thinking about.

You pay for five days. Your team turns up for two.

Remit Consulting tracks access-card data from UK office buildings. In May 2025, average occupancy hit a post-pandemic high of 38.1%, peaking at 44.9% on a Thursday. At the time, that was the highest weekly average since the pandemic.

And two days is now the most common pattern. Indeed’s job ad data, reported by Euronews, found that 56% of UK hybrid roles in 2025 asked for two days in the office.

I call the gap the Empty Desk Tax. On a two-day pattern, you use two days out of five. For every £10 you spend on desks, about £6 pays for an empty chair. (That’s my maths, assuming the desks are free the other three days.)

No other line on your P&L would get away with this. Imagine paying for five coffees and drinking two.

Why did four people share one coworking membership?

At a start-up I used to work for, four of us shared one coworking membership because the company could only afford one. The lesson stuck with me: a small team doesn’t need a desk each, every day. It needs to pay for the hours people actually work.

Long before Werksy, I worked at a start-up that could afford exactly one coworking membership. One membership. Four of us using it.

Was that allowed? No. Not even slightly.

So we got creative. We burned through the free meeting room credits. We booked “meetings” with each other so we had a room to sit in. We signed each other in as guests, every single day, like a very boring heist crew. It worked. We saved money. One expensive membership beat four cheaper ones.

But think about what that really was. Four smart people spent a slice of every week bending the rules of a booking system, half expecting a tap on the shoulder from the community manager, instead of doing their jobs.

• The office model: pay for everyone, every day, and hope they come in.

• What we did: pay for one person and sneak the other three in.

• What we needed: pay for the hours people actually work, wherever they actually are.

That last line is what Werksy is built for. With Werksy for Teams it would have cost that company less, and nobody would have had to pretend to be a guest or hope the front desk wasn’t counting.

How much does a 10-person hybrid team spend on workspace?

A 10-person London team working two days a week pays about £48,000 a year for the cheapest serviced desks, or about £27,400 a year on Werksy for Teams at the average London rate of £4.75 an hour. That’s about £20,600 saved, around 43%. Outside London, Werksy comes in about a third cheaper.

Let’s be fair about this and show the maths. All prices are assumptions, labelled.

Assumptions:

• 10 people, in London.

• Each person works from a shared space 2 days a week, 6 hours a day. That’s real desk time. On Werksy you tap out when you go for lunch or pop out, and the meter stops.

• 46 working weeks a year (allowing for holidays and bank holidays).

• Office option: 10 serviced desks at £400 per desk per month. That’s the bottom of the Level Workspace London range, so the office gets the benefit of the doubt.

• Werksy option: Werksy for Teams at £10 per person per month, plus visits at £4.75 an hour. That’s the average hourly rate across London spaces on Werksy. Listed rates vary by space, from about £1.50 to £9 an hour.

That’s about £20,600 a year saved, around 43%, against the cheapest serviced desks in London. Against a leased office at £12,600 to £21,000 a desk, the gap gets silly.

Outside London both sides get cheaper. Serviced desks at £280 a month come to £33,600 a year. Werksy’s average rate outside London is £3.82 an hour, so the same team pays about £22,300 (£21,100 in visits plus £1,200 in seats). That’s around £11,300 saved, about a third.

Now the honest bit. If people come in four or five days a week, a fixed desk will usually win on cost. Pay-per-minute suits a team that’s actually hybrid.

A few things the table doesn’t show, and they all make the Werksy number smaller, not bigger:

• No service fees on Teams. Individual visitors see a small fee in the app. Teams don’t pay it.

• You control the spend. Set a monthly limit per person, so the £26,220 is a ceiling you choose, not a surprise.

• Up to 20% off at selected spaces. I haven’t included it above, so treat the table as the worst case.

• Ill or on holiday? The meter’s off. A leased desk charges you the same whether someone’s at it or in bed with flu. On Werksy, nobody racks up a bill for a day they didn’t work.

• People can move. Client meeting in the morning, event in the afternoon? They tap out of one space and into another near wherever they need to be. Try doing that with a lease.

What is the hidden cost of an office?

The biggest hidden cost of an office is the commute, because it never shows up on the invoice. Your team pays it in time and energy every day they come in, and it can cancel out the benefit of working around other people.

Now the commute, which is the cost I know best.

When I worked from a coworking space in London, this was my Monday to Friday. Alarm at 5:30am, at my desk for 9, home around 8:30 or 9pm if I was lucky. I didn’t have an alternative, so I did it. It was exhausting.

Here’s the annoying thing: being around people really does help you work. It’s one of the oldest findings in social psychology. In 1898, Norman Triplett noticed that cyclists rode faster when racing with others than when racing the clock (The Dynamogenic Factors in Pacemaking and Competition). In 1965, Robert Zajonc showed that the presence of others tends to boost performance on tasks we already know well, and can hurt on tasks that are new or hard (Social Facilitation, Science).

So the office gave me that buzz. But the early starts, the late nights and never having time to eat properly cancelled it out.

What I needed was two days a week in a space near home. I’d still be around people, just without the commute. I’d have been more focused, more present and happier. And I’d have saved a small fortune on train fares.

That’s the part of “office cost per employee” that no survey measures.

Should your start-up get an office?

Your start-up should get an office if the team is in four or five days a week, needs a room it can lock, or has clients visiting. If the team is hybrid and spread out, paying per use for workspace near where people live is usually cheaper.

Get an office if:

• your team is genuinely in four or five days a week

• you need privacy, signage or a room you can lock

• clients visit you, not the other way round

Don’t, yet, if:

• your team is hybrid and spread across a city (or the country)

• your attendance chart looks like Remit’s

• you’re already gaming meeting room credits (I see you)

Werksy has 169 spaces across 64 UK towns and cities (October 2026), from coworking floors to hospitality venues designed for people to work in. You tap or scan in, pay by the minute and leave when you’re done. No booking, no lease. Have a look at Werksy for Teams.

Connor
Founder, Werksy

Quick answers

What is the average office cost per employee in the UK?

In central London, the all-in office cost per employee for a new office is more than £21,000 a year per desk, according to Lambert Smith Hampton’s Total Office Cost Survey. The Big Six regional cities run around 40% lower. Serviced desks cost £400 to £700 per month in London and £280 to £400 in Manchester, Birmingham and Leeds.

What is the cost of office space per person?

The cost of office space per person depends on rent, business rates, service charge and fit-out, multiplied by roughly 80 to 100 sq ft per desk. In prime central London that adds up to more than £21,000 per person per year.

Should my start-up get an office?

Your start-up should get an office if the team is in four or five days a week or needs private space. If you’re hybrid, you’ll pay for empty desks most of the week. Even at a post-pandemic high in May 2025, UK offices averaged just 38.1% occupancy.

Is a hot desk cheaper than an office?

A hot desk is usually cheaper than an office for hybrid teams. On Werksy, the average London visit-hour costs £4.75, billed by the minute (Werksy, October 2026). A 10-person London team working two days a week comes to about £27,400 a year, compared with £48,000 for the cheapest London serviced desks.