In this blog:
- How much have Leeds office rents risen in 2026?
- My rents were agreed in 2023. How do I know if they still reflect the market?
- How do the new rateable values from April 2026 affect my business rates and lease renewals?
- Has the EPC C by 2027 requirement for commercial property been dropped?
- Why does the South Bank matter to a landlord who owns a building elsewhere in Leeds?
- When should I take advice before a rent review or lease expiry?
Colliers published its latest regional office figures on 11 August. The top rent achieved in Leeds has risen again, to £52.50 per square foot, following a letting agreed by DAC Beachcroft at 31 Wellington Street. Gateley has agreed a deal at the same level, and quoting rents of £55 per square foot are now becoming standard.
For context, the highest rent in Leeds was £40 per square foot in the middle of 2025. By the end of that year it was £46. It is now £52.50.
If you own commercial property in Leeds and your current rents were agreed before that run, there is a gap between what your building earns and what the market now pays for space of its type. How large that gap is depends on the building. Whether you know the size of it is a different question.
A decade of delivery, not a decade of promises
Urban regeneration is easy to announce and hard to deliver. Most projects involve an ambitious masterplan, some compelling imagery and a timeline that quietly stretches. Leeds South Bank is different, and the difference is not in the plans. It is in what has actually been built.
Over the last decade, Monk Bridge delivered 665 apartments across five buildings above a restored Victorian viaduct, completed in 2023. Tower Works, a landmark waterside scheme next to the Leeds Canal, delivered on time in the same year. The Climate Innovation District already has residents living in its first completed phase. The CEG Temple development in Holbeck has delivered nearly 200,000 square feet of occupied office space, turning a former industrial area into a working commercial quarter.
These are not schemes approaching completion. They are places where people live and work today. The South Bank covers an area equivalent to 250 football pitches, backed by £500 million of public investment and billions in private capital, making it one of the largest urban regeneration projects ever undertaken in the UK.
The next phase is not waiting either. Aire Park, the mixed-use neighbourhood being delivered by Vastint on the former Tetley’s brewery site, is already operational and already attracting the kind of occupiers that show real market confidence. Jacobs, the global engineering and technology firm, has confirmed its move to South Brook Street. Northern Rail has chosen Aire Park for its new training hub and office. Ridge and Partners has selected it as its Yorkshire headquarters. The office buildings there have achieved WELL Platinum certification, one of the highest international standards for workplace quality, and Aire Park won Best Office Deal at the Yorkshire Commercial Real Estate Awards 2026.
Why the supply picture matters more to you than the rent figure
Grade A space means the newest, highest specification buildings in a market. In Leeds, the grade A vacancy rate sat at 0.9% at the end of the second quarter of this year, and Colliers expects it to fall further in the second half. The only new office space delivered in the city so far in 2026 has been Vastint’s 75,000 square foot Kellstone scheme at Aire Park, which reached practical completion in June and where around 26,000 square feet remains available.
Meanwhile occupier demand has come back sharply. Take-up in the second quarter reached 179,898 square feet, more than five times the first quarter figure and the strongest quarter since early 2025.
Here is the part that matters if you own an existing building in Leeds. With almost no new space available, occupiers who want to stay in the city centre are taking good quality second-hand space instead. Greencore signed for 39,468 square feet at Broad Gate on a fifteen year lease. There was further activity at Majestic, Platform and 34 Boar Lane in the same quarter. Demand is spilling out of the new-build market and into well-presented existing stock.
If you own that kind of building, your negotiating position is stronger than it was two years ago. It will only translate into rent if it is argued properly at the right moment.
Two things moving in the other direction
Rents are not the only number that has changed this year.
New rateable values took effect on 1 April 2026 and will run until March 2029. Rateable value is the Valuation Office Agency’s estimate of the annual rent a property could achieve on the open market, and it drives the business rates bill. Crucially, the 2026 figures are based on rental values as they stood in April 2024, well before the recent run in Leeds rents. There is also a supplementary charge for properties with a rateable value above £500,000, which brings larger offices and industrial assets into scope. Rateable value also sets the compensation payable to a tenant if you oppose a lease renewal on certain grounds under the Landlord and Tenant Act 1954, so a higher figure quietly increases that exposure.
On energy performance, the government published its interim response to the non-domestic Minimum Energy Efficiency Standards consultation on 18 June 2026. Two changes are worth knowing. The proposed requirement for all commercial lettings to reach an Energy Performance Certificate rating of C by 2027 has been dropped. In its place, buildings over 1,000 square metres will be expected to reach a B rating from 2031, subject to cost effectiveness, and still subject to secondary legislation. The current legal minimum remains E for all commercial lettings.
The deadline has moved. Occupier behaviour has not. Businesses in Leeds are choosing space on quality, environment and running costs, and a poor certificate now costs you at the negotiating table long before it costs you in law.
What we are seeing on the ground
Adair Paxton has operated in this market across generations. We have seen it in every condition and we understand what the current moment represents.
Will Tomlin from our commercial team puts it directly.
“We have watched Leeds change from the inside for many years, and the pace of that change in the last decade has been unlike anything we have seen before. What it has produced is a different kind of conversation with occupiers. Businesses coming to us today are not just asking about cost. They are asking about quality, environment, connectivity and talent attraction. Leeds is answering all of those questions convincingly now, and that is drawing serious interest from occupiers and investors who would not previously have had this city at the top of their list.”
That shift in the nature of enquiries is one of the clearest signals a market can send. When businesses stop asking whether a city is affordable and start asking whether it is the right environment for their people, the direction of travel is clear.
You can see the same energy outside the office market. The Roundhouse on Wellington Road, a Grade II* listed Victorian railway building empty since 2022, recently received planning approval for Ollo Padel to turn it into a sport, fitness and leisure destination. We acted in the letting and continue to manage the wider business park. It is a live example of the kind of opportunity this market is producing.
Where to go from here
If you have a rent review or a lease expiry in the next eighteen months, the gap between a well-advised and an under-advised position has never been wider in this city. A rent agreed against 2023 evidence in a market now transacting at £52.50 is not a small difference. It compounds for the length of the term.
We know which locations are gaining momentum ahead of the wider market. We know which assets represent genuine long-term value. We know the conversations that are happening before they reach the open market. And we will give you a straight view of what we see rather than the view that is easiest to give.
Talk to our commercial team about where your building sits against the current market, and what to do about it before your next lease event.