Most Bournemouth businesses ask how much office space they need when a lease is ending, the team is growing or hybrid working has left half the desks empty. The legal minimum is small, but the space people need to work comfortably is a lot bigger. This guide gives you realistic figures so you can judge a building before you sign for it.
The Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations 1992 Approved Code of Practice sets a minimum of 11 cubic metres per person. Only ceiling height up to 3 metres counts towards that figure. In a typical office with a 2.4 metre ceiling, that works out at about 4.6 square metres of floor area for each person.
That figure leaves out desks, cabinets and other furniture, so in practice it is far too tight. Nobody should plan a working office around it. Use it as a floor you must never go below, not as a target.
For planning a fit out, work from net usable floor area, meaning the space you can actually furnish. Leave out stairwells, plant rooms and shared corridors. These are the ranges we see work well in practice:
The local building stock makes a real difference. Many offices around the Lansdowne, Richmond Hill and Old Christchurch Road are converted Victorian or Edwardian buildings. They often have lots of smaller rooms, chimney breasts, awkward stairwells and uneven ceiling heights. A 1,500 square foot suite in one of these can hold noticeably fewer people than the same area in a modern open floor.
The newer business parks, such as Wessex Fields, Ferndown, the Aviation Business Park near Bournemouth Airport and parts of Poole, tend to have larger open floor plates. Raised floors and suspended ceilings make these far easier to plan efficiently. Where you can run power and data to the desks also matters. In older town centre buildings, cable routes often decide where desks can go more than the floor area does.
Before you agree terms on any unit, get a measured survey or a simple test fit layout. It is a quick way to see how many people will genuinely fit once you allow for walkways, fire escape routes and natural light.
Plenty of Dorset firms now have staff in the office only two or three days a week. So the useful question is how many people are in on your busiest day, rather than how many people you employ. Many businesses now plan for somewhere between 0.6 and 0.8 desks per employee. They then put the saved space into meeting rooms, quiet booths and collaboration areas.
Be careful with this. If everyone comes in on a Tuesday for team meetings, a low desk ratio will leave people hunting for a seat. Look at real attendance over a few weeks before you cut desk numbers, and keep some flexible space that can take the overflow.
A simple approach is to list what the space actually has to hold, then add a circulation allowance. Your total should include:
The Approved Code of Practice sets 11 cubic metres per person, counting ceiling height only up to 3 metres. With a standard 2.4 metre ceiling that works out at about 4.6 square metres of floor area, which is a legal minimum rather than a comfortable working figure.
A 1,000 square foot office is roughly 93 square metres, so as a rough guide it holds about 8 to 12 people in an open layout. That depends heavily on the building's shape, how much meeting and kitchen space you need, and whether it is a converted period property or a modern open floor.
Plan for your expected headcount over the length of the lease, but design the layout so it can flex. Adding furniture to an open area later is far cheaper than moving partitions once you run out of room.