I keep reading the headlines that celebrate a supposed silver bullet: convert underused office blocks into homes and London’s housing crisis will be solved. I wish it were that simple. As someone who watches the intersection of policy, markets and everyday life, I can see why conversions are attractive — they use existing land, they’re quicker than greenfield builds and they appeal to politicians who want visible action. But the reality on the ground is more complicated, and in many cases conversions are making housing problems look different rather than fixing them.
Location and demand don’t always match
One of the persistent myths is that empty or low‑use office buildings sit in precisely the places where people want to live. In practice, a lot of surplus office space is concentrated in financial districts — Canary Wharf, the City, parts of the West End — where daytime working density used to be high. These areas are great for commuters, not always great for families or the people on moderate incomes who most need affordable housing.
When developers turn a 1990s tower in the Square Mile into studio flats, they’re often creating accommodation far more suited to single professionals who want city‑centre living than to key workers, families or older people who need space, schools and local services. That mismatch of location and demand means conversions can fill a market gap but not the social‑housing or family‑home gap that drives most of the crisis.
Size, design and suitability
Offices are designed around deep floorplates, open-plan desks and lots of communal circulation space. Converting that into desirable, well-lit, well‑shaped homes is hard without significant structural change. The easiest route for many developers is to carve the floorplates into small, often narrow flats with limited natural light and poor layout. That produces a quantity of new dwellings on paper, but low-quality homes in practice.
Key problems I see repeatedly:
These units might be sellable or rentable in the short term — especially to young single professionals — but they’re not the sustainable, long‑term housing outcomes planners and communities say they want.
Affordability: conversions are rarely social housing
Politicians often point to conversions as “new homes” and celebrate headline numbers. But what matters to ordinary Londoners is affordability and tenure. Most office‑to‑residential schemes are delivered by private developers and come to market as market‑rate sales or private rentals. A scheme that swaps 200 offices for 200 one‑bed flats will do little for the families on waiting lists or the households priced out of their neighbourhoods.
Local authorities and the GLA have tried to address this by attaching affordable housing requirements to planning permissions, but conversions often qualify for exemptions or viability negotiations. Developers argue that the costs of conversion — demolition, redesign, meeting building regs, new services — squeeze returns and make affordable contributions unviable. The result: fewer truly affordable units than a greenfield or mixed‑use scheme might have delivered.
Infrastructure and services are overlooked
Housing isn’t just a set of bricks. It needs schools, GPs, transport capacity, parks, recycling and reliable water and energy networks. Office districts are engineered around morning and evening peaks; they aren’t always set up for 24/7 residential demands. I’ve spoken to council officers who report sudden pressure on primary school places and GP surgeries after a tranche of conversions completed.
Transport is another hidden cost. Some converted buildings sit near Tube and DLR stations, but many are in pockets where public transport is limited. Commuters can adapt, but families and older residents need more consistent connectivity. Without coordinated investment in local infrastructure, conversions can leave new residents isolated and overstretched local services.
Loss of economically strategic office space
There’s a trade‑off. Eroding office supply in certain corridors can undermine London’s ability to host businesses that generate jobs and tax revenue. Post‑pandemic hybrid working has reduced some office demand, but we don’t know what the long‑term pattern will be. If we strip out too much office capacity now, it may make it harder for firms to expand or relocate to London in the future, pushing economic activity outward and changing where jobs are created.
Some conversions target older, low‑quality offices that make sense to repurpose. But other schemes cannibalise grade‑B or even grade‑A stock because it’s commercially convenient. That’s a short‑term market play that could have long‑term consequences for jobs, footfall and business clusters.
Speculation, buy‑to‑let and short‑term lettings
Conversions can flood the market with small units that are ideal for investors chasing yield. Overseas investors and buy‑to‑let landlords buy blocks of apartments, and some of these end up on short‑term rental platforms like Airbnb. That converts potential long‑term homes into transient accommodation, particularly in central locations prized by tourists. So while the dwelling count rises, the supply of long-term, affordable housing does not.
Planning rules, viability games and perverse incentives
One reason conversions have proliferated is that planning policy has, at times, incentivised them. Permitted Development Rights (PDR) allowed change of use from office to residential without full planning scrutiny. This speedy route cut through normal local authority checks on design, affordable housing contributions and community impact. The result was headline numbers but patchy outcomes.
Since 2019, reforms have tried to reintroduce local control, but developers adapt. Viability assessments become battlegrounds where predicted costs are inflated to reduce affordable housing contributions. Meanwhile, short‑term government targets and mayoral ambitions reward quantity over quality. The system often lacks mechanisms to ensure conversions deliver the mix of tenures and dwelling types the city needs.
Energy performance and retrofitting costs
Office conversions can be carbon‑intensive. Retrofitting old glass facades and deep floorplates to meet modern energy efficiency standards is costly. Where developers skimp, energy bills and comfort for residents suffer. Where they invest, the higher upfront costs can be used to argue that affordable housing contributions are unaffordable. Either way, the environmental and social trade-offs are real.
What needs to change — pragmatic ideas I support
Conversions should be a part of London’s response to the housing shortfall, especially where they unlock brownfield potential or breathe life into structurally obsolete buildings. But treating them as the solution to the city’s housing crisis is a mistake. They can deliver new homes fast, but too often those homes are the wrong type, in the wrong places, and unaffordable for the households who need them most.
If we are serious about solving London’s housing problems we need to think beyond unit counts. We need durable, mixed‑tenure neighbourhoods, fit‑for‑purpose infrastructure and planning that balances housing delivery with the city’s economic needs. Conversions can play a role — but only as part of a broader, better‑regulated strategy that prioritises quality, equity and long‑term sustainability over short‑term headline numbers.
