smallbusiness.co.uk: Helping your business think big

Hi, a great place to look for office space is sure-space.com, hope this helps

A very long answer to a very short question if you ask me! If you're using a serviced office then you should reckon on 65-75sqft per person. In a conventional office without services you'll probably need more like 120sqft per person because of all the extra things you need to allow for such as reception area, kitchen, meeting room, cleaning cupbaord, server storage, file storage etc etc. If you need a serviced office have a look at www.serviced-offices.biz - loads of information on offices almost everywhere.

Very helpful. thank you. i still have a few concerns about the small office we are building for our administrator. you say "In plain English what this means is whilst 11 cubic x 10 people = 110 cubic metres would appear to be unacceptable metres you would have to take into account that machinery, desks, filing cabinets etc may in practical terms so reduce the space available to the person that it is unacceptable." it is a rather small office, a little under 13 cubic metres with no furniture in it. it has a window looking onto the main foyer and has no ventilation other than the fan i planned to buy him. the office will still need a desk, computer, small filing cabinet, the fan and two chairs put in it. ne for the administrator and one for any clients who need to see him. i am concerned that with all this furniture in the office it will then fall below the required 11 cubic metress. who enforces this rule. if we do it anyway can i expect a visit one day from someone telling me we have to find him a new office. i realise this may sound like i'm not the nicest of people but i am actually concerned about breaching health and safety laws and how to go about reporting such breaches.

As far as I'm aware any Health & Safety guidelines are worked out on sq feet/metres, rather than cubic feet/metres so your 11 cubic metres isn't very helpful. "How high is an office?" is as good as "How long is a piece of string?" If you work on 6.5sqm or 70sqft per person you're well within any guidelines & there are many open plan offices (such as call centres) that probably work closer to 50sqft per person. I don't know exactly where you're looking for offices but try www.serviced-offices.biz which has plenty of suggestions all over the place.