Councillors have raised concerns over the impact of shrinking office space on Stoke-on-Trent's town centres.

Stoke-on-Trent saw a loss of two square metres of office floor space in 2024/25, which council planners believe is due to the national trend of increased working from home since the pandemic.

The city previously saw an increase of 1,139 square metres of office space in 2022/23, but this fell to just 36 square metres of new offices in 2023/24.

According to Stoke-on-Trent City Council's new planning services monitoring report, the decrease is due to 'the trend in changing working patterns, and the decline of new office development'.

Planning committee members considered the findings of the report at their meeting on Wednesday. They fear that the office space trend will have dire consequences for the viability of town centres, as shops lose out on passing trade from office workers.

Councillor Ross Irving said: "I do think a clear message needs to be sent that because this trend is taking place – and it's taking place throughout the country – the knock-on effect for town and city centres is becoming more and more noticeable.

"Fewer people that are going into the commercial districts to work, that has a knock-on effect on the commercial viability of those centres.

"We see it here. I used to have a commercial premise in Stoke, and the reliance on workers from the Civic Centre in those days was huge, for the entire town. But now we have more and more people within our authority working from home for two, three, four days a week sometimes.

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"Although there is little that can be done, I think we have to look closely at the effects."

The last major boost in office floorspace in Stoke-on-Trent happened in 2015/16, when the opening of the two office blocks on the Smithfield site in Hanley contributed to an overall increase of 43,789 square metres.

Committee chair Andy Platt noted that Stoke-on-Trent had seen a trend of redundant town centre office space being converted to residential – plans to turn the former Hanley Police Station into 161 flats were approved in 2022.

But he believes that the decline in demand for office space makes it all the more important for council planning policy to encourage development in town centres.

Cllr Platt said: "This is something that must inform our discussion over policies in the local plan. We always used to have a strong line on out-of-town developments and town centre first. I think we need to beef that up."

According to the monitoring report, a total of 6,259 square metres of employment floorspace was completed in Stoke-on-Trent in 2024/25, along with 2,751 square metres of retail floorspace.