Walk a few London office floors with an agent this year and you will hear the phrase within the first ten minutes. Cat A+ is a floor the landlord has already fitted out to a generic occupier standard: desks, a meeting room or two, a tea point, sometimes a phone booth and a soft seating corner. You sign the lease and move in.
It is not a serviced office. You hold a conventional lease, the space is yours to alter within the licence, and the fit out becomes part of the building at the end of the term. The landlord has simply done the Cat B for you, to their taste, and priced it into the rent.
What you actually get
A typical Cat A+ floor includes open plan bench desking with task chairs, one meeting room per 15 to 20 people, a tea point with basic appliances, floor finishes over the raised floor, lighting to an open plan layout and data cabling to the desks. What it does not usually include is branding, a reception, specialist AV, a kitchen with a dishwasher, or any cellular offices. The quality is landlord grade: sound, unremarkable, built to let.
When it is the right call
The first case is a short lease. If you are signing for three years or less, a full Cat B fit out will not pay back before you leave and you will strip it out at the end. Cat A+ means no capital outlay, no dilapidations on the fit out itself, and a move in that takes weeks rather than months.
The second is speed. A conventional fit out from lease signing to occupation runs 16 to 30 weeks once design, landlord consent and construction are added up. A Cat A+ floor can be occupied in four to six.
The third is a company that does not care what the office looks like, or that is honest enough to admit its staff care more about location and light than about a branded reception. That is more companies than the fit out industry likes to think.
When it is not
If the office is part of how you recruit, sell or present yourself, a generic floor will not do it. If your layout needs cellular space, a lab, a studio or a trading floor, the landlord’s open plan will fight you every day. And if the lease is long, the rent premium on a Cat A+ floor can exceed the cost of doing your own fit out by year four or five.
Ask the agent for the rent on the same floor as bare Cat A. The difference, over the lease term, is what you are paying for the fit out. Compare that with a quote from a Cat B fit out contractor for the same floor and the decision usually makes itself.
The middle path
Several firms in the directory will take a Cat A+ floor and adapt it: rebrand the reception, add two more meeting rooms, swap the tea point for a proper kitchen. That is a much smaller project than a fit out from Cat A, often £20 to £40 per square foot, and it gets you most of the identity for a fraction of the cost. The Cat A vs Cat B explainer sets out where each category starts and ends.
