When I walked around a deserted Canary Wharf, I realised working from home will SINK the dream of Wall Street on Thames, writes ROBERT HARDMAN

Whisper it softly, however this is perhaps London’s best-kept secret. Here is a place with zero litter (not to mention canine mess), each conceivable selection of bar and restaurant (indoor or out of doors), cleanish swimming and arguably the greatest transport hyperlinks in the capital.

I spot a couple of dozen individuals lounging around on an immaculate garden watching the Ashes on a couple of big open-air screens. Should anybody really feel thirsty, there are a number of bars surrounding this grassy plaza. If you like one thing smarter, you possibly can adjourn to the terrace of The Ivy restaurant. For its namesake in London’s West End, it’s essential to e book lengthy upfront. No reservations wanted right here.

If cricket’s not your factor, there may be one other big display screen down the street displaying golf.

It is a sunny Thursday lunchtime at Canary Wharf, the busiest day of the week I am informed by everybody who works right here. So the place is everybody? There are not any queues in the sushi joints or the espresso retailers. I stroll previous one of the most astonishing sights of all. Here is a absolutely operational submit workplace with nobody in it. You can really go straight to the counter. I cannot keep in mind the final time I went to the submit workplace with out having to do at the very least a zig if not additionally a zag of one these snake-shaped queue traces.

Those who would relatively not watch sport throughout their lunch hour have lots of waterside choices. I drop in at the Henry Addington pub, a good spot from which to look at the lunchtime swimmers cooling off in the dock under. I would have thought swimming in the brown-black waters of London’s East End was the quickest solution to a dose of gastroenteritis. We are however a brief stroll from the smelly outdated River Thames, in any case. But it seems that the water on this dock comes from an underground spring, not from the river, and is examined all the time. ‘I’ve by no means been ailing,’ says the chap working the bathing jetty.

All of which makes life fairly civilised for many who work in the tallest, shiniest monument to Margaret Thatcher’s ardour for deregulation.

However, this easygoing ambiance additionally raises awkward questions for the homeowners of this 128-acre chunk of prime London actual property — which accounts for around 10 per cent of the capital’s workplace area. If Thursday is, at the very least, reasonably busy, Friday has extra of a ghost city vibe.

Might high-rise Canary Wharf have merely grown too tall and too large for its personal good? Does the capital nonetheless need a sky-high monetary district along with the centuries-old City of London up the street? Some doomsters are suggesting the finish is nigh for a place emblematic of a bygone age of big dealing flooring, shouty merchants and massive financial institution bonuses.

Older readers could keep in mind the days when Harry Enfield performed a brash TV wide-boy known as Loadsamoney, the phrase Yuppie — younger upwardly cellular skilled — was half of on a regular basis language and the City went via a deregulatory revolution known as ‘the Big Bang’.

Mrs Thatcher was at her peak and noticed a approach of redeveloping the uncared for, if not derelict, eight sq. miles of docks subsequent to the City of London. Planning guidelines had been put aside, tax breaks issued and the entire space grew to become referred to as ‘Docklands’.

The most formidable improvement was at West India Docks. There stood the outdated warehouses of Canary Wharf (as soon as the transit level for items from the Canary Islands). By the Nineties, it had its first skyscraper. By the flip of the century, with the Millennium Dome throughout the Thames at Greenwich, it was buzzing. A decade later, with the 2012 Olympics rejuvenating one other swathe of the outdated East End, Canary Wharf seemed like a mini-Manhattan. The constructing work by no means stopped.

Then got here double hassle. First, the post-Covid development for working from home kicked in and reveals little signal of abating. This has had a secondary impact with many large employers now downsizing to swimsuit their diminished wants. Just a month in the past, it was introduced that one of the world’s largest banks, HSBC, is planning to vacate its 45-floor Canary Wharf skyscraper when the present lease expires in 2027. This is a hammer blow as a result of HSBC shouldn’t be solely shrinking however relocating — again to the City of London.

It’s laborious to not spot its emblem on the monster tower referred to as 8 Canada Square from whichever approach you strategy Canary Wharf. Pre-Covid, it used to accommodate 8,000 workers throughout 1.7 million sq. ft.

Millions of viewers comprehend it from the opening credit of The Apprentice as the digital camera swoops over the gleaming skyline of London E14. Designed by Sir Norman (now Lord) Foster, it’s one of Britain’s tallest buildings (656ft excessive) and an unapologetic assertion of world monetary clout.

Now, although, it’s lower than half full and a few of its workers will not be sorry to be leaving. ‘I’d a lot relatively be again in the City as a result of it appears like the actual world,’ says John, an HSBC employee having a beer after work in the Grandstand bar, subsequent to the large garden with the video display screen. He says that some sections of HSBC are fortunate to see the workers again in two days a week and that the entire place feels ‘bizarre’.

At the different finish of the central cluster of skyscrapers on the quayside is one other emblem — that of Credit Suisse. Four months in the past, the Swiss big was swallowed up by its outdated rival UBS, that means job cuts are virtually inevitable right here.

Another main tenant, legislation big Clifford Chance, has additionally introduced it’s leaving. For the previous 20 years, it has occupied a 32-storey, a million sq. foot skyscraper known as 10 Upper Bank Street. It moved right here to snuggle as much as the large funding banks which as soon as constituted its bread and butter.

Now, although, extra offers are being executed by the smaller personal fairness corporations which like to hang around in luxurious city homes in Mayfair. So Clifford Chance is transferring again to the City of London and a new workplace block simply a third of the dimension of its Canary Wharf home.

One of its main rivals, Allen & Overy, has already left. Meanwhile, the U.S. legislation agency Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom has additionally introduced it’s relocating to the City subsequent 12 months. The listing goes on.

The irony is that Canary Wharf has by no means been a extra engaging place to work. The latest opening of the £19 billion Elizabeth Line, along with the Jubilee Line and the Docklands Light Railway, imply you will get wherever in Central London in beneath half an hour. There are actually direct hyperlinks not simply to London City Airport but in addition to Heathrow. Dozens of new eating places and bars have opened, together with status names equivalent to Hawksmoor and Dishoom.

The homeowners are doing all they’ll to diversify away from monetary providers. A brand new life sciences complicated is taking form, with discuss of rivalling Oxford and Cambridge.

Crucially, a big new residential quarter known as Wood Wharf is up and working, with 3,500 new residents and extra on the approach. They are served by retail malls which embody a Waitrose, a John Lewis and a cinema. Hotels are popping up (together with Britain’s tallest). All deliberate lengthy earlier than Covid.

The result’s that what was, till lately, purely a huge workplace complicated is now a futuristic metropolis inside a metropolis, albeit a relatively soulless one. The flats look tailored for a Premier League signing at close by West Ham. Homely they ain’t.

This week’s announcement by Housing Secretary Michael Gove that extra business premises needs to be changed into dwellings definitely poses fascinating questions for Canary Wharf. 

‘Everything shuts at around ten in the night, which does not hassle me. But now you can dwell and work right here and by no means must go wherever else,’ says Irena, a banker from Poland who arrived right here 4 years in the past. She lives in a close by tower block crammed, she says, virtually fully by abroad workers.

Young worldwide recruits with good salaries, lengthy hours and no ties in Britain discover it is handy to be inside strolling distance of the workplace. But Brits discover it tougher to really feel at home. 

‘I could not suppose of something worse than residing right here,’ says James, a banker in his 30s, having fun with an after-dinner pint in the Henry Addington pub. ‘It could be like residing in a everlasting enterprise journey. I do not blame HSBC for desirous to get out.’

The Canary Wharf Group (CWG), which owns the place, declines to debate any of this. Its reluctance is perhaps defined by its latest downgrade by Moody’s to what the rankings company calls ‘a substantial credit score threat’. Moody’s is perhaps about to pile on much more ache by becoming a member of the exodus itself.

It at present employs 1,200 workers right here however, two days in the past, it emerged the company has requested consultants to search for new premises a third of the dimension, fairly probably someplace apart from Canary Wharf.

A spokesman for CWG informs me I am not allowed to interview anybody on the avenue. The Mail photographer is informed he wants to use for an official allow to take images (which is granted).

The final time I encountered this kind of paranoia was in the Middle East, however then CWG is half-owned by the Qatar sovereign wealth fund, the different half belonging to a Canadian actual property empire.

However, there may be as but no legislation towards hanging up a dialog, although employees are all very nervous about being recognized.

During a quantity of visits over the previous couple of weeks, a number of issues have turn out to be obvious: First, younger workers and abroad employees are more likely to say that they take pleasure in working right here. Those in center age and extra senior positions are far more inclined to desire the City.

Second, the American-run banks are being a lot harder about ordering workers again to their desks. British bosses are softer.

Third, individuals say Canary Wharf is healthier now than pre-Covid.

I have come right here partly for nostalgic causes. In 1991, as a younger journalist for the Daily Telegraph, I was amongst the first tenants in the first part to open in the first skyscraper at a new improvement known as Canary Wharf. Still a wharf, it even had ships moored on it. There was one bar, the Cafe Brera (I am happy to say it’s nonetheless there). Then the builders went bust.

However, the new homeowners stored the religion and, fairly quickly, extra tenants meant extra pubs and eating places. The principal downside was that you just by no means felt you had been in London. A journey into ‘city’ was nonetheless an expedition. I was in the constructing the evening, in 1996, when the IRA blew up our earlier constructing and all the glass in our tower, briefly, bent inwards after which out from the shockwave.

Yet the homeowners stored constructing upwards and the banks stored transferring right here, lured by cheaper rents than the City and the promise of higher transport hyperlinks. The Jubilee Line arrived in time for the opening of the Millennium Dome. I left as HSBC arrived. Finally, ‘the Wharf’ felt full.

Now it is one other world. At the finish of at some point, I spot a group of revellers in a floating motorised scorching tub which is chugging around the docks whereas its occupants pop open one other champagne bottle. Echoes of the ‘Loadsamoney’ period, besides all of it feels extra of a final hurrah than a shiny new daybreak.

Few suppose it’s all over, although many predict Canary Wharf faces a robust future. ‘Since the pandemic, some of the banks have a lot extra empty workplace area, so I suppose the feeling is many may relocate,’ says a Citibank vice-president who has labored right here for practically 20 years.

His financial institution, nonetheless, has no plans to depart and, being American, is beginning to crack the whip on coming again to work, once more. ‘We have a mandate to take action three or 4 occasions a week at a minimal.’

He says he’s ‘very glad’ with Canary Wharf, particularly now that the Elizabeth Line has given it recent impetus. Transport for London give me some fascinating figures, not least the proven fact that weekend site visitors via all its stations right here is up by 181 per cent versus pre-pandemic numbers.

In different phrases, the bankers could also be transferring out however the public likes coming in for some buying and a chew. But will that be sufficient to maintain the lights on in all these glass and metal behemoths? Or is Maggie’s Wall Street-on-Thames destined to turn out to be Canary Dwarf?