There has been much talk, media coverage and political discourse recently on “rebalancing the economy” and ensuring a “fair distribution” of jobs and investment to the regions outside Belfast.
In pure physics you need at least some weight on one side of the see-saw for it to be unbalanced. Without that weight, perfect balance is already achieved.
Unfortunately, we do not have a heavy weight of investment and job creation in Belfast at the current time, certainly not in the office sector and indeed every week sees further occupancy losses and more vacant buildings.
Recently, the office of the First Minister and Deputy First Minister, the Department of Finance and Invest Northern Ireland have all spoken about the need to invest in the regions and also decentralise public sector jobs into the regions. I don’t want to bring physics into it again, but that move, currently, would create an almost perfect vacuum in our capital city.
Until we accept that our economy is under extreme stress and that we firstly need to fix the problems of our capital city, and indeed our attraction as an investment location, then, in my opinion, there is little point in rippling out what is already an under-performing location.
On the plus side there is a recent announcement of EY opening its first major office in the Eglantine Barracks scheme in Derry, but this is by expansion of their workforce and not relocation out of Belfast.
It is always great to see expansion, that should be welcomed, but to further the problems of the Belfast office market with relocations to the regions seems short-sighted and possibly detrimental to the overall already stretched economy.
Our latest office research figures show that only 46,000 sq ft of new space was taken up in Belfast city centre in the final quarter of 2024. Perhaps not surprisingly this is the lowest figure I have ever encountered, other than the two Covid years.
As far as I can see, there was no Government take-up of any offices in Belfast city centre in 2024, which in my view means they either must be happy with current work-from-home policies or are already distributing jobs to the regions. The government office stock is well known to be well below decent standards in terms of employee accommodation and ESG credentials.
Putting aside the ongoing question of traffic congestion, we need to look at the levels of occupancy in Government buildings, assess wastage therein and address those problems before the policy decentralisation is implemented.
Our recent report on investment transactions shows that only £118 million worth of stock was traded in 2024 with the largest sector being in the retail field. In the Republic of Ireland, the retail field alone has seen transactional volumes of over £1,000,000,000, again showing how much of a problem we have in attracting investment into Northern Ireland.
In our view we need to fix Belfast first, then let that fix ripple out into the regions, rather than react to vote-hungry appeals from regional MPs, no matter that they may be very well intentioned.
- Brian Lavery is managing director at CBRE NI
