What is a Coworking Space? Shared Office Guide | CityFlex
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What is coworking?

Coworking, found in shared workspaces across London and every major UK city, is a model where individuals and teams from different companies work alongside each other in one professionally run building, sharing the space, the facilities and often a social community. Rather than one business leasing and running its own premises, an operator equips and manages the building, and members buy access on flexible terms, from a single day to a rolling monthly membership. A coworking space is the building itself: typically a mix of open plan desks, private offices, meeting rooms, phone booths, kitchens and lounges, occupied by many businesses at once.

How a coworking space works

How a coworking space works

The operator carries the whole cost and effort of running the workspace. Fit out, furniture, superfast internet, utilities, cleaning, reception and events are all provided centrally, and members share them. Access is sold as a membership rather than a tenancy, so joining involves picking a tier, signing a short agreement and starting the same day, with no legal negotiation and nothing to install.


Most coworking spaces sell three tiers of seat. Hot desks give access to unassigned seats in the open plan areas. Dedicated desks reserve a fixed, personal desk with lockable storage in the same shared environment. Private offices are enclosed, lockable rooms for whole teams that still share the building's communal facilities. The tiers form a ladder, and members commonly move up it as headcount grows, without ever changing address. Most operators also run bookable meeting rooms and event spaces as a fourth, occasional tier, used by members and outside businesses alike.


The term shared office space is often used interchangeably with coworking, and for practical purposes they describe the same thing: professionally managed workspace occupied by multiple businesses at once. Estate agents and landlords sometimes use flexible workspace as a third label for the same buildings.


Separate CityFlex guides cover hot desking and the private office tier in more depth, and the flexible office space guide sets out the full market.

Coworking membership options

Most coworking spaces offer a choice of flexible membership options, allowing individuals and teams to select the level of privacy, permanence and access they need.

Hot desks

Hot-desk memberships provide access to unassigned seating in shared work areas. Members choose any available desk and can usually book by the day or through a rolling monthly membership.

Dedicated desks

A dedicated desk is reserved for one member and normally includes personal storage. It provides a permanent workstation while retaining access to the building's shared facilities and community.

Private offices

Private offices are enclosed, lockable rooms for individual businesses and teams, combining privacy with access to shared meeting rooms, lounges, kitchens and building amenities.

Meeting and event space

Bookable meeting rooms and event spaces provide occasional private space for client meetings, presentations, workshops and larger gatherings, often available to members and outside businesses.

Who coworking suits

Coworking earns its keep for anyone who wants a professional working environment without taking on premises. Freelancers and consultants escape home working and gain a credible place to meet clients. Startups put their first small team into a dedicated corner without spending a pound on furniture or broadband contracts. Scaling businesses treat the private offices within coworking buildings as stepping stones, expanding room by room as they hire. Even established companies now buy memberships for remote staff and regional employees, treating coworking as distributed office infrastructure bought by the seat. Agencies and studios in particular gravitate to the model, since project headcount swells and shrinks and the space can follow it, and remote first companies use memberships as their entire property strategy.


The community is a large part of the value. Buildings run networking events, talks and socials, and the informal contact between businesses produces clients, suppliers, hires and collaborators in a way an isolated office cannot. Add the amenities a single small business could never justify alone, from barista coffee and podcast studios to showers, cycle storage and event spaces, and the membership fee buys considerably more than a place to sit. Beyond community, membership solves practical problems that home working cannot: somewhere presentable to host clients, colleagues for the isolated, structure for the easily distracted and a boundary between work and home. Many members report the address alone justifies the fee, since a recognised building reads very differently from a residential street on a proposal or an invoice. Teams gain something too: satellite staff get a base with colleagues around them rather than a spare bedroom, and founders get a credible venue for investor and client meetings from day one, all without signing for premises.


How coworking developed in the UK


Coworking arrived in the UK in the late 2000s and grew through the 2010s from a niche for freelancers into a mainstream part of the office market, led first by independent London spaces and then by national operators opening across the regions. Two forces drove it: the rise of small digital businesses that needed professional space without leases, and later the shift to hybrid working, which pushed even large employers toward space bought by the seat. Today every major UK city carries a coworking market of its own, and the model shapes how new office buildings are designed, with amenity floors and shared lounges now standard far beyond coworking itself. The pattern repeats outside the capital. Manchester, Bristol, Leeds, Glasgow and Belfast each developed strong local coworking scenes over the same decade, often rooted in converted industrial buildings, and regional memberships now account for a large share of the UK market. Pricing gaps between cities have narrowed as specification has levelled up, though London retains the deepest choice.

Coworking costs

Coworking costs

Coworking is priced by the seat and the tier. In London, unlimited access hot desk memberships typically cost £150 to £300 per month, dedicated desks £250 to £450, and private offices within coworking buildings from around £400 per desk. Regional cities generally price memberships between £100 and £250 per month, with day passes available almost everywhere for occasional use. Fees normally include internet, refreshments, events and an allowance of meeting room hours, with VAT charged on top, and agreements roll monthly so a membership can be scaled, paused or ended at short notice.

Find a coworking space

Coworking memberships, dedicated desks and private offices are available with flexible terms, live pricing and often the option to arrange a trial day.

Browse coworking spaces in London and across the UK on CityFlex to compare buildings, check availability and arrange a visit.

Coworking FAQs

  • What is a shared office space?
    A shared office space is any professionally managed workspace occupied by more than one business, and in everyday use the term means the same as a coworking space. Occasionally it describes one company subletting spare desks within its own office, a smaller and more informal version of the same idea.
  • What is a dedicated desk?
    A dedicated desk is a fixed, personal desk within a coworking space, reserved for one member and usually paired with a lockable pedestal or storage unit. It offers the permanence of a private setup at a lower cost, while keeping full access to the building's shared facilities.
  • Do coworking spaces offer day passes?
    Almost all of them do. A day pass buys a hot desk plus the building's amenities for a single working day, and is the standard way to trial a space before committing to a monthly membership. In London, a pass typically costs £15 to £35.
  • Are coworking spaces suitable for established companies?
    Increasingly, yes. Larger businesses use coworking for satellite teams, regional hubs and remote employee bases, and many operators now build enterprise floors and suites specifically for occupiers of fifty desks or more.
  • Do coworking memberships include meeting rooms?
    Most memberships include a monthly allowance of meeting-room credits, with additional hours bookable and paid by the hour. Private rooms with screens and video-conferencing facilities are standard in most coworking buildings.
Find a coworking space