London’s great coworking spaces

Huckletree

To avoid the hefty rent demands of many of London’s office spaces, the evolution of coworking has meant that startups and SMEs have been able to progress within their businesses at affordable rates.

Not only this, coworking spaces allow for the interaction between business individuals, consequently enabling them to gain potentially valuable contacts in the process.

The benefits of coworking continue, as coworking supports the general consensus that most people in the workplace feel that flexibility helps them to work as effectively as possible.

Allocation of space allows workers to operate in a ‘work-from-home’ style environment, however, without the distractions of home life and with more efficient resources.

London has some of the quirkiest, communal and spacious coworking areas existing, so narrowing them down, proved to be a difficult task.

Central Working

Location: Bloomsbury, Shoreditch, City, Farringdon, Whitechapel and Paddington.

Pricing: membership starting at £99 per month.

Central Working 2Founded in 2011, Central Working provides over 1,800 businesses of all sizes with the environment, community and support to thrive. Its network of beautifully designed clubs in different prime locations, allow businesses from a range of margins to be reached. Members have the option of dropping-in, a permanent office or using a collaborative workspace. A close bond between members and the Central Working team is valued to ensure that businesses are happy to meet, share and collaborate without hesitation.

Central Working guarantees a meaningful connection to your business in your first 30 days or you get your money back. In September 2015 Central Working won the Employee Engagement award at the HR in Hospitality awards, with the judges recognising Central Working’s innovative, honest and entrepreneurial approach to staff training and motivation.

In 2017, Central Working will open the UK’s largest innovation space in Cambridge in a partnership with Trinity College Cambridge.

www.centralworking.com

Impact Hub Westminster

Location: Haymarket

Pricing: starting at £20 for half of the day.

Hub-Westminster--(1)Another coworking space that launched in 2011 is Impact Hub Westminster – one of the largest of a global network of locally owned collaborative working spaces. The workspace offers an affordable, yet flexible and supportive environment for organisations to grow.

Impact Hub offers various types of membership, dedicated desks or team desk space. They believe the struggle of isolation is exposed to early stage organisations and so the workspace’s environment and services are designed to support members from these businesses in various forms of support.

Continually, they host a flow of events and programmes that provide members with networking opportunities, as well as a chance to learn more about the sector they are working in. Uniqueness stems from being locally owned but globally connected, meaning that their members benefit from localised support but join a global community. Their Hub passport further allows members to benefit, as it gives them opportunities to work in other Impact Hub’s across the world – in 80 locations.

www.westminster.impacthub.net

Huckletree

Location: Shoreditch and Clerkenwell

Pricing: starting at £35 for the day.

HuckletreeHuckletree is one of London’s fastest growing coworking communities and they believe that no matter whether you work for a large tech business or as a solo entrepreneur, opportunities should be available to everyone.

They choose to surround themselves with people who share the same values as them to ensure inspiration and motivation are upheld. By offering shared workspaces for a diverse mix of ambitious entrepreneurs, startups, larger businesses and investors, Huckletree helps to promote the flow of innovative ideas and creations.

Their Shoreditch office space offers stretching zones, hydration stations, indoor and outdoor gardens and little clutters of inspiration. In addition, they have a classroom for 40 and 4 meeting rooms with affordable pricing. Their space in Clerkenwell was launched in 2014 and is slightly different as opposed to their Shoreditch space as it is smaller, but nevertheless still beautifully designed.

www.huckletree.com

Co Work Hub

Location: North Acton

Pricing: starting at £20 for the day.

Co Work Hub 1Co Work Hub is one of the largest coworking offices in West London. The space holds endless features within such as, a gym, showers, 6 meeting rooms, 1 conference room, free beer, 24 hour access, dedicated desks, great coffee machine, games room with a pool table and table tennis, super-fast internet, bike racks and car parking. Even though the meeting rooms are free for members to use, external clients can still pay for usage for an affordable rate of £20 + VAT per hour. Most of their members are local but come from diverse sectors from PR to web developers.

The Co Work Hub community allows the members to carry out business between each other, mingling entrepreneurs with freelancers and small companies with large companies – generating worthwhile contacts in the process. Their ‘Wellbeing Wednesday’ is a unique weekly opportunity for members to take part in yoga, see a nutritionist, learn some healthy food options, as well as receiving an office massage. The networking events held at Co Work Hub also welcome members and encourage support of the local community.

www.coworkhub.co

Club Workspace

Location: Chancery Lane, Bethnal Green, Chiswick, Farringdon, Islington, London Bridge, Southbank and 10 other locations in London.

Pricing: starting at £95 per membership.

Club Workspace 1Club Workspace was set up to provide small businesses of all stages, as well as freelancers, the environment to work in and allows them to belong to an inspiring and active business community. With the choice of access to one or all 17 business clubs, members have the freedom of using free wifi, refreshments and can attend various networking and business growth events.

As part of their package, members can also gain access to optional services including printing and scanning facilities, meeting rooms, lockers and a business mailbox. Club Workspace offers four different types of membership: 3 days 1 Club, Everyday Everywhere, Your Desk and Team Room.

If you are an entrepreneur, startup or professional, this quirky workspace believes it can offer the right tools to help your business grow and interlink connections with other businesses within the community.

Being part of Workspace Group with its direct marketing model means that they can easily track demand from customers across London and ensure that each Club Workspace is in the right and appropriate location, effective catering to the needs of its members.

www.workspace.co.uk/co-working

TechHub

Location: Bonhill Street

Pricing: starting at £425 per year for a flex membership.

Tech Hub 1TechHub is the global community for tech entrepreneurs and startups and works with over 750 companies around the world to help them scale.

As well as being situated in London, you can find TechHub space in other locations such as Madrid, Warsaw and Swansea where members can work, meet and collaborate. The space loves to encourage members’ success, whatever the scale; no amount of success goes unnoticed. TechHub grew from the idea that by bringing like-minded people together in a physical location, great businesses and opportunities can form.

They have such believe in the startup world, that they are convinced startups can go global from day one. The space claims to address three core challenges experienced by technology entrepreneurs and startups: global growth opportunities, community and flexible, affordable workspace.

Every member of the space has access to the startup growth programmes, events, communities as well as the local workspaces. TechHub’s membership model allows member startups to access the entire programme, no matter their membership level, and to adjust their workspace flexibly to adapt to changes in team size and structure.

www.techhub.com

Rainmaking Loft

Location: Tower Bridge

Pricing: starting at £349 (+VAT) per month per desk.

Rainmaking Loft 1The quirky coworking space, Rainmaking Loft is ideal for tech startups, giving them the best possible environment to grow their company in. They can aid to connect members to build a valuable relationship, help to find a suitable investor, as well as offering access to their extensive network of experts.

The London loft belongs to the family of other lofts situated in Copenhagen and Berlin, which members are also welcome to make full use of. Creation and innovation is at the heart of Rainmaking Loft’s community and they eagerly encourage collaborations between members through meetings in the club, whether that be quick sit-downs or at community events (Wednesday Yoga and Friday Beers) and meetups (The Loft Lunch and The Inspiration Hour). The diversity at the Loft is one to note, where they account more than 35 different nationalities. Membership allows access to numerous benefits such as, 24/7 access, 6 meeting rooms, ultra-fast internet and free coffee, as well as much more.

www.rainmakingloft.com