City vs Suburban Offices in the UK: What Works Best for Growing Teams?
Written by: Angeline Suriaatmaja
Last Update: 29 June, 2026•Read: 10 minutes
Office Space in London can help you win a client meeting on Monday and make half the team question the commute by Friday.
Hybrid work has changed how UK businesses judge office location. A central address still matters for clients, hiring, visibility, transport, and sector networks, but it no longer makes sense for every team to travel into the busiest part of the city by default.
As Mark Dixon, chief executive of IWG, said: “It’s clear that the old ways of working, with a daily unproductive and expensive commute, are long gone.”
That shift is already visible. A survey of 300 businesses found that 54% of UK businesses had opened offices or coworking spaces outside city centres, while 38% had secondary locations in commuter towns.
Suburban and commuter-town offices are no longer just the cheaper fallback. Well-connected locations outside the centre can offer more room, easier parking, calmer surroundings, and better access to employees who live nearby. But they can also weaken client access, narrow specialist hiring, or only work for part of the team.
So the question is not as simple as “city vs suburban offices in the UK?” It is whether the location supports how your business needs to work, hire, meet, commute, and grow.
Hybrid work has changed how UK businesses judge office location. A central address still matters for clients, hiring, visibility, transport, and sector networks, but it no longer makes sense for every team to travel into the busiest part of the city by default.
As Mark Dixon, chief executive of IWG, said: “It’s clear that the old ways of working, with a daily unproductive and expensive commute, are long gone.”
That shift is already visible. A survey of 300 businesses found that 54% of UK businesses had opened offices or coworking spaces outside city centres, while 38% had secondary locations in commuter towns.
Suburban and commuter-town offices are no longer just the cheaper fallback. Well-connected locations outside the centre can offer more room, easier parking, calmer surroundings, and better access to employees who live nearby. But they can also weaken client access, narrow specialist hiring, or only work for part of the team.
So the question is not as simple as “city vs suburban offices in the UK?” It is whether the location supports how your business needs to work, hire, meet, commute, and grow.
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