How much office space do I need?

For most UK offices, plan on roughly 8 to 10 square metres (about 85 to 110 sq ft) of net internal area per workstation. The British Council for Offices’ 2022 position paper proposed 10 sq m per work setting as its base occupancy figure, up from 8 sq m in its 2019 guide. In a serviced office you rarely need to calculate this: space is sold by the desk, so you start from how many people need a desk on your busiest day.

The recognised benchmarks

BCO workplace density

The British Council for Offices (BCO) publishes the benchmarks most UK landlords, agents and designers use.

• Measured average: 9.6 sq m per workplace. The BCO’s 2018 research, Office Occupancy: Density and Utilisation, covered 6.6 million sq ft of occupied space across 84 occupiers and 314 floors, and found an average workplace density of 9.6 sq m, down slightly from 9.9 sq m in 2013.
• Design figure: 10 sq m per work setting. A 2022 BCO position paper, reported by Building in June 2022 and CIBSE Journal in October 2022, proposed a base occupancy criterion of 10 sq m per work setting and withdrew the high-density figure of 8 sq m net internal area per work setting.
• Utilisation: 60%, not 80%. The same paper proposed reducing assumed space utilisation from 80% to 60%. For designing core elements such as toilets and lifts, that moves the effective density from 12.5 sq m to 16.7 sq m net internal area per person.

These figures are for designing and fitting out buildings. They are useful for sense-checking a lease, but they are not rules you must follow.

HSE legal minimum

The Health and Safety Executive’s Approved Code of Practice for the Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations 1992 (L24, 2nd edition, 2013) says that “in most workplaces 11 cubic metres (11 m³) of space per person should be taken as a minimum”, and that ceiling height above 3 m should be ignored in the calculation. With a 2.5 m ceiling, 11 m³ works out at about 4.4 sq m of floor per person.

The HSE adds that 11 m³ “may be insufficient if much of the space is taken up with furnishing or equipment”. Treat it as a legal floor, not a comfortable office.

Serviced office rule of thumb

In a serviced centre, meeting rooms, kitchens and reception sit outside your office, so the office itself can be smaller than an equivalent leased space. Wezoo’s 2026 UK guide uses roughly 100 sq ft per workstation when converting lease rents into a cost per desk.

Desks-to-space table

The table converts the two BCO density figures into net internal area. It is the net internal area implied by each figure per work setting, not shared building space such as lifts and toilets. (1 sq m = 10.76 sq ft; figures rounded.)

Workstations	At 8 sq m each	At 10 sq m each
2	16 sq m (170 sq ft)	20 sq m (215 sq ft)
5	40 sq m (430 sq ft)	50 sq m (540 sq ft)
10	80 sq m (860 sq ft)	100 sq m (1,080 sq ft)
15	120 sq m (1,290 sq ft)	150 sq m (1,610 sq ft)
20	160 sq m (1,720 sq ft)	200 sq m (2,150 sq ft)
30	240 sq m (2,580 sq ft)	300 sq m (3,230 sq ft)
50	400 sq m (4,310 sq ft)	500 sq m (5,380 sq ft)
100	800 sq m (8,610 sq ft)	1,000 sq m (10,760 sq ft)

Use the 8 sq m column for a dense, desk-focused layout. Use 10 sq m if you want more room per person, more storage or more space for informal meetings within your office.

How to work out your own requirement

1. Count people, then count desks

Start with headcount, then decide how many desks you actually need:

• Everyone in every day: one desk per person.
• Hybrid: measure attendance for a few weeks and plan for your realistic peak day, not the average.
• Growth: add the headcount you expect over the term of the agreement. In a serviced office with a 12-month licence you can resize at renewal, so you need less headroom than with a five-year lease.

2. Add the space desks don’t cover

Most teams also need some of:

• Meeting rooms and phone or focus booths
• A quiet room, wellbeing or prayer room
• Storage, filing, print and post area
• Kitchen or tea point
• Reception or waiting space
• Server or comms cupboard

In a serviced office most of these are shared and already provided, so you only pay for the desks. In a leased or managed office you plan, fit out and pay for them yourself. That is one reason a 10-person serviced office can be much smaller than a 10-person leased office.

3. Check what the building provides

Hubble’s UK page shows that most UK flexible buildings have kitchens (91%) and meeting rooms (90%), but only about a third offer parking (36%) and around two-thirds showers (68%). If any of these are essential, add them to your brief.

4. Sense-check against cost

Once you know the desk count you can estimate cost. Serviced offices are priced per desk per month: Wezoo’s 2026 guide gives a UK median of £249, with £509 in London and £219 in regional cities. See serviced office costs in the UK for city-by-city figures.

A worked example

Say you employ 24 people on a hybrid pattern, and a month of attendance records shows a peak of 16 in the office on the same day.

• Serviced office. Ask for offices of around 16 desks. Meeting rooms, kitchen and reception are shared, so that desk count is your brief. If you expect to hire four more people within the year, ask whether a larger office in the same building could be available at renewal rather than paying for empty desks now.
• Leased office. At 10 sq m per work setting, 16 workstations need about 160 sq m (roughly 1,720 sq ft) of net internal area. You would then add your own meeting rooms, kitchen, storage and reception on top, so the total floor area you lease will be noticeably larger than the desk area alone.

The same team can need very different amounts of space depending on what the building provides, which is why it pays to compare like for like.

Serviced, managed or leased: how space is sold

Option	How size is quoted	What you need to know
Serviced office	Number of desks	Your peak-day desk count
Managed office	Desks and floor area	Desk count plus meeting, breakout and support space
Leased office	Sq ft of net internal area	Full space plan, including everything above

For a fuller comparison of the three, read serviced vs managed vs leased offices, or start with what is a serviced office.

Practical tips

• View with your desk count in mind. Operators’ “10-desk” offices vary in size and layout. Ask for the floor area and look at desk widths.
• Check meeting-room capacity. If you meet clients often, a generous meeting-room allowance may matter more than a bigger office.
• Don’t over-buy for growth. In flexible space it is usually cheaper to move up at renewal than to pay for empty desks now.
• Allow for storage. Serviced offices can be tight on storage; ask about lockers or a store room.

Tell us your headcount, peak-day desks, budget, area and move date and we will send a free shortlist of offices that fit, with pricing, within 48 hours. offices.co.uk lists 750+ buildings in 50+ UK cities, including London, Manchester, Leeds, Bristol and Birmingham.