This is the most tenant-favourable lab market in a decade. UK vacancy hit a record 14.3% in Q2 2026 and the Golden Triangle is above 25%, after 1.8 million square feet was delivered in two years. If you are taking space, you have leverage. What you still have to get right is whether the building can physically do what you need — because labs sit in Class E, so the planning is usually easy and the engineering rarely is.
Golden Triangle vacancy above 25 per cent. Rent-free periods, capital contributions toward fit-out, break rights and shorter terms are negotiable in a way they simply were not two years ago.
Slab-to-slab height, floor loading, riser capacity, extract routes, plant space and vibration decide whether a building can be a lab. 'Lab-enabled' is a marketing term, not a specification.
CL1, CL2 or CL3 changes the building, the consents and the cost. It should shape your shortlist rather than emerge from a feasibility study three months in.
Our fee is paid by the landlord. No acquisition retainer and no fee to you at any stage.
Containment level, instrument list, fume cupboard count, extract requirement, write-up to bench ratio and headcount. That specification rules buildings out faster than any budget.
Slab-to-slab, floor loading, riser capacity and route, extract discharge, plant space, vibration and power resilience — alongside the rent, not instead of it.
Capital contribution or extended rent free toward the fit-out, break rights, and a reinstatement position capped at heads of terms rather than argued at the end.
UK lab vacancy reached a record 14.3 per cent in Q2 2026, more than doubling in two years, with the Golden Triangle above 25 per cent after 1.8 million square feet of delivery. Vacancy is expected to rise further through 2026 before stabilising in 2027 as completions slow.
Demand is not the problem. GSK pre-let 300,000 square feet at Cambridge Biomedical Campus, take-up in the first seven months of 2026 reached nearly 500,000 square feet — matching the record set in 2015 — and Cambridge has rebounded ahead of Oxford year to date. The imbalance is supply, and it is temporary.
Research and development sits in Class E(g)(ii). So do offices. Moving between them is not development and needs no planning application, which is precisely why so much surplus office is now being marketed as 'lab-enabled'.
That phrase carries no definition. The planning is easy; the engineering is not, and a floor plate that cannot take the services will not become a wet lab however it is described. Some activities also fall outside Class E — manufacture at scale is B2 and certain processes are sui generis — so confirm what you are actually doing before you rely on the flexibility.
CL1 and CL2 space is relatively widely available. CL3 changes the building specification, the consents and the cost substantially — air handling, pressure regimes, effluent treatment, access control and validation all step up together.
Work with genetically modified organisms and with certain biological agents is notifiable to the Health and Safety Executive, and the notification attaches to the premises rather than to you. Establish your containment level before you build a shortlist, because it determines which buildings are even candidates.
Lab fit-out costs a multiple of office fit-out, and in the current market the landlord should be carrying a meaningful share of it — as a capital contribution, an extended rent-free period, or a shell-and-core letting with a works package. Ask. In a 25 per cent vacancy market, the answer is frequently yes.
Then negotiate the reinstatement position at heads of terms. Decontamination and strip-out of a lab fit-out is a substantial dilapidations liability, and it is dramatically cheaper to cap it in the agreement for lease than to argue about it at expiry. On MEES: EPC E is the minimum to let, and EPC B by 2031 applies above 1,000 square metres, which most purpose-built lab buildings exceed.
Usually not. Offices and research and development both sit in Class E(g), so moving between them is not development. That is the easy half. The hard half is whether the building can take the services, the loading and the extract — and that is an engineering question with a much less convenient answer.
Nothing, as a matter of definition. It is a marketing term applied to office buildings whose owners would like them to be labs. Some genuinely have the slab-to-slab height, riser capacity and roof plant space to convert; many do not. Ask for the slab-to-slab dimension, the floor loading in kN per square metre and a riser schedule. Those three answers tell you more than any brochure.
For an occupier, yes — probably the best in a decade. Vacancy is at a record 14.3 per cent nationally and above 25 per cent in the Golden Triangle, and it is forecast to rise further before stabilising in 2027. Demand is strong, so this is a supply overhang rather than a demand collapse. The implication is that the overhang will clear, and the terms you agree now should be pushed hard while it lasts.
Slab-to-slab height. Wet lab services need roughly four metres and a typical office floor gives you 3.2 to 3.5. There is no design that recovers it, so it is the first question to ask and the cheapest one to answer. Extract routing to roof level is a close second.
No. Our fee comes from the landlord. What it buys you is somebody asking about risers and floor loading before you commission a feasibility study on a building that was never going to work.
