Office Fit-Out Marylebone

Office fit-out in Marylebone means fitting out workspace around Baker Street, Marylebone Road and Marylebone station. The space ranges from a floor above a shop or a small suite in a converted townhouse to a floor in a purpose-built block, and the tenant may be a professional practice or a small firm. The work is partitions, ceilings, lighting, power, tea points and WCs, fitted under the landlord's licence and Westminster's building control.

For Marylebone, the construction part of an office fit-out is published at £70 to £120 per sq ft as a UK guide, and an all-in London office fit-out at £148 to £359 per sq ft (Oktra and Cushman and Wakefield, 2026). GS Renovation Ltd, a building contractor based in Potters Bar, does the work in Marylebone: we build the office partitions, ceilings, lighting and finishes as one contract and coordinate the IT supplier and specialist trades around them.

Where office space sits in Marylebone

Office space in Marylebone sits in mixed streets rather than a business park. Around Baker Street and Marylebone station it takes several forms: offices above shops, suites in divided townhouses and floors in larger buildings. Each type has its own access, lift and riser limits. A townhouse suite may have one narrow stair and no lift, so partitions, ceiling grid and plant come in by hand and the programme allows for it.

Planning keeps that office stock in use. Westminster's Article 4 Direction removing Class E to C3 rights in the Central Activities Zone was made on 14 July 2021 and modified by the Secretary of State on 22 July 2022. Marylebone Road and Marylebone High Street are named CAZ Retail Clusters covered by it. For an office tenant this is background, not a task: on those streets a change to homes needs a planning application rather than the permitted route. The fit-out question is simply how to make that space work for you.

Cat A and Cat B in a Marylebone office, in plain terms

Cat A is the landlord's base finish: a clean floor with a suspended ceiling, lighting, raised floor or trunking for power, heating and cooling, and working WCs, with no rooms built. Cat B is the tenant's layer on top: partitions and glazed screens, meeting rooms, a tea point or kitchenette, small power where the desks go, data containment for your IT supplier to cable, decoration and internal signage. In a Marylebone period building the Cat A may be thin or missing, so part of it falls to the tenant.

Agree the split in writing before pricing. The lease or the agreement for lease says what the landlord hands over and what you must fit, and it often names the landlord's surveyor who approves drawings. We price Cat B against that base, flag gaps such as an old distribution board or a ceiling that cannot take new lights, and give you one programme from strip out to handover. Where a floor has been let before, strip out of the previous tenant's fit-out is the first stage.

Building regulations for a Marylebone office fit-out

Westminster building control defines a fit out as alterations to an existing office or shop where no structural alterations take place, and a Marylebone office refit usually sits in that category. The rules that bite are Part B, for fire compartments, escape routes, doors and alarms, Part M, for access and the accessible WC, and Part L, for efficient lighting and controls. New partitions can lengthen an escape route or block a corridor, so the layout is checked against the fire strategy before walls are set out.

An office in use by staff is covered by the Fire Safety Order, and Westminster allows a building notice only where work does not affect the layout and is not affected by that order. A Marylebone office fit-out therefore goes in as full plans, and Westminster aims to reply within 5 weeks, though it says it may take longer. Its worked example for a non-structural fit out of three storeys of an office shows the charges split into a plan charge and an inspection charge. Painting and decorating are not notifiable and stay out of the estimated cost.

Licence, occupied floors and lease end in Marylebone

The landlord's licence for alterations comes first: drawings, a method statement and a programme go to the landlord's surveyor before anything is stripped out. In a Marylebone building with other tenants still working, noisy work stays within Westminster's standard hours of Monday to Friday 8am to 6pm and Saturday 8am to 1pm. Noisy construction outside those hours needs a Section 61 application at least 28 days ahead. With homes nearby it is rarely granted, so drilling stays in the day and quiet work fills the evenings.

A business commissioning an office fit-out is a client under the CDM Regulations, with duties of its own. It must allow enough time and resources, supply information about the building, and appoint a principal designer and principal contractor where more than one contractor is involved. We plan and manage the site as contractor and tell you what the client role needs. At lease end, dilapidations and reinstatement may require the Cat B to come out and the space to go back to its base condition, and we price that work too.

• Office fit-out and refurbishment for small and medium office suites
• Decoration and making good to a move-in standard
• Dilapidations and reinstatement works at the end of an office lease

VOA Council Tax stock of properties, March 2025, for Marylebone & Park Lane and Bryanston & Dorset Square. Counts rounded by the VOA.

Once you know the scope of the office fit-out in Marylebone, it helps to read commercial fit-out in Marylebone, office fit-out across Westminster, builders across London, building control in London, our London office fit-out page and Order of Works.

Working With GS Renovation in Marylebone

An office fit-out is judged on the day your staff move in. We work to your designer's drawings and the landlord's fit-out rules, get the partitions set out against the fire strategy before building control inspects, and coordinate the containment so your IT supplier can cable without delay. Noisy stages are timed around the other tenants, and the handover pack holds the electrical certificates and the records the landlord's surveyor will ask for at lease end.

• Founder with 30+ years of hands-on experience
• Data cable routes agreed with your IT supplier before partitions are boarded
• Full plans building control coordinated for the new office layout from the outset

Checked by Abdelaaziz Saaid, founder and director of GS Renovation Ltd (Companies House no. 14611254).