Businesses could seek out secure document storage as they wait for new office space to become available.
Businesses located in Britain’s biggest cities could be moved to make use of document scanning and storage as they face a significant wait to move into new premises.
According to new figures from the global property consultancy Jones Lang LaSalle (JLL), some 3.6 million square metres of new prime and secondary office space is set to be completed across the UK by the end of 2011.
This is the lowest amount since 1998, suggesting firms of all sizes may have to wait if they want to move to new premises any time soon.
Indeed, the JLL report also warns that, rather than picking up in the new year, it’s unlikely that Britain will see an upturn in the volume of new office space being made available until at least 2013, suggesting demand for online document scanning and other space-saving solutions could continue to be strong for the foreseeable future.
"Looking forward, with the current economic uncertainty, it’s increasingly unlikely that we’ll see developers commence new developments and there’s still restrictions to the level of development finance that is out there," the company’s head of UK and pan-European research Bill Page told Reuters.
Expanding on the idea of ‘economic uncertainty’, JLL has warned that the euro zone sovereign debt crisis in particular is likely to force many firms to reconsider plans to move into new offices, with the owners of London’s multi-million pound skyscrapers set to be the biggest losers of this trend.
Despite this, however, a separate report from JLL has also revealed that Heron International is about to make history by charging the biggest rents ever seen in the City of London.
The property developer is due to let out residential units in the 36-storey Heron Tower, located right in the heart of the city, over the next few days, with the going rate likely to be in the region of £1,600 per square foot.