What Amenities Should Your Team’s Office Actually Include? A London Market Guide

A long amenities list looks convincing on a floor plan or a listings page, but it rarely predicts whether an office actually works for the people using it. Two buildings can offer nearly the same list, a gym here, a rooftop terrace there, and still produce completely different experiences once a team moves in. What decides that is less the list itself and more how closely it matches the way your team spends its week.

This guide sets out how to think about office amenities in London the way an adviser would: starting from how often people come in and what they do once they’re there, then working out which facilities actually reduce friction and which ones you can skip. Some teams get more value from dependable meeting rooms and fast, stable connectivity. Others find that showers, secure cycle storage or a quiet corner away from the open floor make a bigger difference to whether the office gets used at all.

How your team actually uses the office

Before you weigh up any amenity list, get answers for three questions about your own team: how many days a week people are actually in (not what the policy says), what they spend most of the day doing, calls, focused solo work, meetings or seeing clients, and where the current setup creates friction, if you already have an office. Those answers narrow the decision far more than a generic checklist could. A ten-person sales team on the phone most of the day has a completely different priority list from a five-person studio that’s in twice a week and mostly needs a quiet room and a decent screen setup.

The office amenities every team should check first

Before considering extra amenities, make sure the office covers the essentials your team will rely on every day. These are not legal requirements simply because they are described as essential, but they are commercially important points to verify during a viewing.

Start with reliable, business-grade internet and ask whether a backup connection is available. Desks and chairs should be suitable for a full working day, with enough power sockets close to each workstation. Heating, cooling, toilets, drinking water and basic kitchen facilities should also be easy to access and sufficient for the number of people using the office.

A few things are worth confirming directly rather than assuming:

• Who handles a broadband or power issue, and how quickly they typically respond
• Whether cleaning and maintenance requests get same-day or next-day attention
• Who has access out of hours, and how that access is actually controlled

Amenities that depend on how your team works

Once the fundamentals are covered, the right amenities depend on your team’s working patterns. Sales teams making frequent calls may need several phone booths, while teams doing focused technical work will benefit from quiet areas away from open-plan activity. Client-facing businesses should prioritise a professional reception and meeting rooms that can accommodate their usual group size..

Requirements also shift with the type of space you’re in. Coworking, fixed desks, private offices, serviced offices and managed offices all bundle amenities differently, and availability varies by building and operator on top of that. A fixed desk on a shared floor might come with limited meeting room credits; a private office in the same building might not. See our guides to what a coworking space includes, what a serviced office includes, and what a managed office involves if you’re weighing these up.

What’s different about doing this in London

London adds a few considerations that don’t come up the same way in a single-site office in a smaller city. Most teams here don’t arrive by one method: some come by tube, some by train from outside the M25, a growing number cycle in from Zone 2 or 3. If cycling is common on your team, secure storage and a shower matter more than almost any other single amenity, so check current capacity rather than just whether storage exists. Larger new developments must provide a set number of long-stay cycle spaces under the London Plan (Greater London Authority, Policy T5), one reason provision varies so much between a newly built tower and a converted period building.

Attendance patterns matter here too. Most UK employers with hybrid policies now set a minimum number of office days, and three days a week is the most common arrangement, according to CIPD’s 2025 survey of flexible and hybrid working. If your team is only in twice a week, an amenity that only pays off with daily use, a subsidised on-site café, say, is worth less to you than to a company running a five-day policy.

Building age is worth checking case by case rather than assuming from the outside. Some Victorian and Georgian conversions in areas like Fitzrovia or Clerkenwell have limited lift capacity, older cooling systems, or patchy mobile signal on lower floors, though plenty of well-refurbished period buildings have none of these problems. If neighbourhood character and transport links matter as much to you as what’s inside the building, our guide to choosing a London neighbourhood covers that side of the decision.

Amenities that sound impressive but may not earn their place

Some amenities read well on a listing page and add little in practice. A rooftop terrace shared across a building of 400 desks, bookable in two-hour slots a week in advance, is a different thing from a terrace on your own floor that your team can use whenever it likes. A gym only earns its place if enough of your team would actually use it, and a wellness room sitting empty because nobody knows the booking system isn’t doing anything for anyone.

None of this makes these amenities worthless, only in need of the same scrutiny as anything else: what’s included in your licence, what’s shared with other occupiers, what needs booking, and what carries an extra charge. A café in the lobby run by the landlord rather than your operator is a nice-to-have at best, since it has nothing to do with your fit-out and everything to do with who else leases space nearby. Amenities can sit at building level, shared across several occupiers, or be specific to one floor or licence, and not every workspace on a broader listings page includes everything shown for the building as a whole.

A simple way to prioritise: three tiers, then a quick reference

Before comparing buildings, sort your own requirements into three tiers. Non-negotiable covers what your team needs to work safely and reliably: fast connectivity, workable temperature control, secure access. High-use covers what you’ll rely on weekly and that genuinely changes how the office functions, such as enough meeting rooms or phone booths for your actual call volume. Nice to have covers everything else: a gym, a rooftop terrace, an events calendar. Worth having, but not worth compromising on location, layout or budget to get.

Classifying your own list this way before you start comparing buildings stops a nice-to-have amenity from quietly outweighing a weak fundamental. The table below maps common team requirements to what’s worth prioritising and what to check on a viewing.

Team requirement	Amenity to prioritise	What to verify during a viewing
Team on calls most of the day	Enough phone booths or private call space for peak demand	Try to book one yourself during the viewing and see how long the queue is
Team cycling in regularly	Secure, covered cycle storage with spare capacity, plus showers	Ask for current occupancy, not just whether storage exists
Client-facing team hosting visitors	A presentable reception and a meeting room that fits your typical group size	Check who staffs reception and how visitor access works day to day
Team needing quiet, focused work	Defined quiet or focus areas, not just open-plan desks	Visit mid-morning on a weekday and gauge the actual noise level
Team in only one or two days a week	Fundamentals over shared extras like gyms or cafés	Confirm whether your desks are fixed or shared under your plan
Team handling confidential work	Private, enclosed meeting rooms rather than open booths	Check acoustic separation, not just whether a door closes

Questions worth asking during a viewing

• What’s included in the licence fee, and what’s charged separately?
• How many meeting rooms or phone booths does this floor share, at what ratio to desks?
• Is cycle storage at capacity, or is there a waiting list?
• Who’s responsible for a repair, and what’s the typical turnaround?
• Are showers and end-of-trip facilities on this floor, or shared building-wide?
• What happens to amenity access if your licence is shorter than other tenants’?
• Can you view at the time of day your team would actually be there?

Comparing your options

Once you know which amenities are non-negotiable and which are genuinely nice to have, comparing buildings gets much faster: you’re checking whether a specific meeting-room ratio, cycle store or kitchen setup matches what your team will use, not weighing amenity lists in the abstract. You can compare office space across London on myhqspaces.com and check what’s included at each listing before booking a viewing, rather than assuming every workspace includes every amenity discussed here. If you’re still weighing up whether a physical office is worth the move at all, our comparison of coworking against working from home covers that earlier question.

Frequently asked questions