Edward Griffin shares a reminder that some brands, like WorkPad, aren’t built overnight. They are built slowly, and deliberately, by focussing on the long view.

CoworkingCafe‘s UK and Ireland Q1 2025 State of the Coworking Industry Report, explores workspace inventory at national and local levels — including a breakdown of leading coworking markets — alongside median subscription prices and top coworking operators.

Key findings:

Combined inventory now stands at 4,090 spaces (up from 3,326 last quarter). 3,335 of these are in England, 291 in Scotland, 119 in Wales, 84 in Northern Ireland and 261 in Ireland. Nearly 30% of the UKs spaces are in London, followed by Manchester (93 spaces), Glasgow (67), Birmingham (63), Edinburgh (58), Bristol (56), and Leeds (52). Cardiff is largest in Wales with 38 and Belfast leads Northern Ireland with 32.

Price-wise in the UK, median open workspaces sat at £175 p/month, while dedicated desks fetched £248 on average. Interestingly Brighton and Hove saw the highest rates for dedicated (£300/month), while Oxford leads on hotdesks at £295/month. VOs average in at £50/month while meeting rooms came in at £27/hour. In Ireland the average dedicated desk was €295/month, hotdesks at €200/month, VOs at €75/month and meeting rooms fetched €40/hour.

Location-counts: The Largest operators in the UK were Regus (198), Fora (63), Workspace Group (53), Workpad (41) and Spaces (41), while Ireland’s charts are topped by Pembr (18), Iconic Offices (14) and Regus (9).

Edward Griffin, the CEO of WorkPad shared an interesting take on where we stand overall as it relates to how the general public has adopted flexible workspace. Many in the industry reference a "hockey stick" type of increase in the market, but how can you determine just where we stand? According to the adoption theory, flexible workspace has now crossed "The Chasm" from early adopters to early majority, as evidenced by compelling market indicators. UK flexible workspace enquiries have risen 14% year-on-year and are now 206% higher than pre-pandemic levels according to Savills, while their flex advisory division, Workthere has published research that shows inquiries for larger requirements (20+ desks) have doubled to 24% in the past year. The shift represents a fundamental market evolution, with landlords expecting more than half their portfolios to be flexible by 2030 as businesses of all sizes embrace flex solutions to reduce financial risk while maintaining professional workspace.

Editors note: this was supposed to be in last week’s newsletter and was even discussed on our last Weekly Recap episode – but a tech glitch (they do happen!) prevented it from going out in that email. So here it is, this week instead.

Elliot Gold (from Work.Life) shared about the formation of the Workspace Intelligence Network as an operator-led initiative to share data to form collective knowledge to drive growth. In short: data-sharing and anonymous benchmarking, without expensive intermediaries.

The other founding members include Office Space In Town, techspace, The Boutique Workplace Company, Canvas, Orega, Runway East, Spacemade, Uncommon, x+why, The Arterial Group and the Workpad Group.