What Andy Burnham’s Premiership Means for London Office Occupiers

By Fraser Williams, Co-Founder & CEO, Morgan Pryce

Andy Burnham’s arrival as Prime Minister on 20 July 2026 changes very little, immediately, for London  office occupiers. Gilt markets stayed calm, and London’s supply squeeze is a function of construction pipelines and lease cycles, not politics. The two things genuinely worth watching are how the Autumn Budget treats business rates, landing on top of a 2026 revaluation that has already moved London submarket costs by up to 38%, and whether devolution policy accelerates enough to change the calculation for businesses that can genuinely work from anywhere.

A seventh prime minister in a decade

On 20 July, Andy Burnham became Prime Minister, taking over from Keir Starmer after a fortnight most of Westminster saw coming. He’s the seventh person to hold the job in ten years. In his first hours in post he promised cost-of-living measures within the week and a ten-year national plan later this year, against a backdrop that remains stubbornly slow: UK GDP is forecast to grow by just 0.8% in 2026. I’ve had three or four clients ask some version of the same question since Monday: does any of this change what we should be doing about our office? Fair question. Here’s my honest read, three days in.

The market shrugged, and that’s the good news

Two months ago, the mere prospect of a Burnham premiership rattled UK bond markets. The actual event was met with, in one analyst’s phrase, “little more than a shrug,” with the risk premium on gilts staying contained. That matters more than it sounds. The gilt market sets the tone for the cost of capital that funds everything in commercial property: landlord development pipelines, refurbishment budgets, investor appetite, and ultimately the incentives landlords can afford to put on the table for tenants. A calm bond market means no financing shock working its way through to the leasing market. After the volatility of the last few years, boring is worth quite a lot. What would change that reading: an autumn budget the markets decide doesn’t add up. If your lease has rent review or break clauses, stress-test affordability against a higher-rates scenario, as you always should. But nothing from week one of this government demands it.

Should we still be based in London?

Burnham built his national profile as Mayor of Greater Manchester, the “King of the North,” campaigning hard for regional investment and a rebalancing of the economy away from the capital. It’s a fair bet devolution and regional growth feature heavily in his ten-year plan. So the boardroom question follows naturally: is this the moment to rethink the London footprint? My view: the regional case is real, and it’s getting stronger. But it doesn’t touch what’s actually driving London’s office market right now, because that story is structural, not political. Prime West End vacancy sits below 2%, with core submarkets holding under 15 months of supply. Up to 50 million square feet of London office leases expire by 2030. And 2026 completions are down roughly 40% year-on-year, with around 70% of what is being delivered already pre-let. Supply and demand don’t read the newspapers. Even a genuinely successful regional agenda would take years to move London’s fundamentals, and in those years the occupiers who acted on today’s squeeze will already have their buildings and their terms locked in.

“In twelve years running this business, I’ve never seen a change of government move the needle
on a London occupier’s decision in its first week. What moves the needle is supply. Supply doesn’t
change with the government.”

Fraser Williams, Co-Founder & CEO, Morgan Pryce

None of that means the regional conversation isn’t worth having properly. Regional prime markets are forecast to see rental growth of their own this year, and a shortage of good-quality space is a national story, not a London one. The grass is greener in fewer places than the headlines suggest, but it isn’t nowhere. If a genuine dual-site or regional strategy makes sense for your business, run the numbers properly rather than reacting to a fortnight of news cycles.

The one to actually watch: business rates and the Autumn Budget

This is where a Burnham government could genuinely move the numbers for London occupiers. Business rates are already the most volatile line in the 2026 occupancy budget. This year’s revaluation has redrawn London’s cost map: Farringdon’s rateable values have risen around 38%, Shoreditch 16%, while Bloomsbury has fallen 5% and London Bridge 11%. For a mid-sized occupier, submarket choice is now a five-figure annual decision before a single lease negotiation even starts. Burnham has spent years arguing for reform of local business taxation and local government funding, a theme that ran through his time in Greater Manchester. Whether that becomes rates reform, further devolution of rates retention, or transitional relief in his first Autumn Budget remains genuinely open. But the direction of travel puts the rates system on the table in a way it hasn’t been for a while. Practically, that means London’s occupancy cost map could be redrawn twice in a single year: once by the revaluation, once by the Budget. If your lease event falls in the next 24 months, rates scenario-planning belongs in your property strategy now, not after the Budget speech in the autumn.

What to do this quarter

The lesson of seven prime ministers in a decade isn’t that politics doesn’t matter. It’s that waiting for political certainty is a strategy with no exit ramp. Businesses that paused property decisions through each transition are still sitting in buildings that no longer fit them, on terms they negotiated without any leverage.

1. Start early. Eighteen to twenty-four months before a lease event, as a minimum. The supply squeeze punishes late movers regardless of who’s in Number 10.

2. Build optionality. Price renewal, re-gear and relocation in parallel. Political and fiscal uncertainty is an argument for more alternatives, not fewer.

3. Model the whole cost stack, including rates scenarios either side of the Autumn Budget, not just headline rent.

4. Negotiate flexibility. Break options, capped service charges and shorter commitments are worth more to you in unsettled fiscal weather than they were two years ago.

Political weather changes. Supply and demand doesn’t. Position accordingly.