The Clustering of Financial Services in London*

Table 4: Recruitment of Staff (all grades) from South East England

Responses on commuting patterns in the interview survey revealed that in many cases
staff tend to come from specific areas in and around London and that ease of access for
skilled client facing, secretarial and back office staff to an existing central London office
would be a key factor ruling out a significant change of location. The concentration of
transport nodes around the City was seen as a major advantage in terms of staff
recruitment. In banks and legal firms, high earning skilled staff were said to favor living in
the more expensive outer boroughs of London, for example, Richmond-upon-Thames and
Wimbledon, or the West End, for example Kensington, or the rural commuter belt. Some
senior staff preferred to commute weekly to London and retained central London flats
convenient for the office. There was also evidence of some inter-city weekly commuting to
London from other UK and European cities by senior staff. Skilled support staff tend to
live further from the center of London, either in the suburbs or outside London where
housing prices are lower. Distance from central London was related to age, household
circumstances, and cost. Younger skilled staff were said to favor living in fashionable and
convenient central London districts while older staff of all grades with children were said to
move further out from the center in spite of added commuting time and cost. The location
of favored schools emerged as an important housing location factor in some interviews.

The ability to recruit senior staff via informal channels was signaled as an important
advantage of operating in a compact geographical space. Not surprisingly, informal

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