The 90,000-square-foot letting of The Welcome Building in Temple Quay is the South West’s most significant office transaction of 2025 and the largest in Bristol for six years.
Acting as strategic tenant advisor, Newsteer supported Hargreaves Lansdown in securing new headquarters that reflects the company’s ambition and Bristol’s growing prominence as a national centre for financial and digital excellence.
The deal significantly contributes to a £500 million regeneration programme for the site, a cornerstone of the Temple Quarter Enterprise Zone, one that already is attracting further investment.
These characteristics led an independent panel of judges to award it a CoStar Impact Award.
About the project: A central challenge for Hargreaves Lansdown was identifying a space capable of meeting its corporate vision and bringing its 2,000-person workforce into a unified, experience-led environment.
The Welcome Building delivered a next-generation headquarters, and Newsteer collaborated closely with the tenant, landlord and design teams to ensure the building’s amenity package went beyond standard Grade A expectations.
The Welcome Building includes a dedicated wellness suite, a high-quality gym, a ground-floor café open to employees and the public, extensive biophilic elements and curated public art, all of which promote staff wellbeing, support hybrid working patterns and strengthen the employer’s value proposition in a highly competitive talent market.
The building’s BREEAM Excellent and WELL Building certification supported Hargreaves Lansdown’s environmental, social and governance commitments.
Temple Quay is one of Bristol’s most connected districts, yet ensuring seamless mobility for a 2,000-strong workforce required careful planning. The project team reviewed multimodal transport options, staff travel patterns and anticipated hybrid working flows to find an approach that would encourage sustainable travel and maintain operational resilience.
As an anchor employer, Hargreaves Lansdown’s move has created high-value employment use that reinforces Bristol’s reputation as a hub for finance, technology and professional services. It brings heightened footfall, daytime and evening economies and a strengthened local business mix.
What the judges said: Ytzen van der Werf, programme leader, real estate finance and investment, University of the West of England, Bristol, said “given the fact that take-up has been decent but still below longer-term averages, it is admirable that the joint venture that owns the building has been able to let these floors to Hargreaves Lansdown with the support of Newsteer at a more-than-decent, new headline rent of £50-plus per square foot. This letting is setting the tone.”
Paul Hobbs, director, industrial, sales and leasing, Avison Young, said this “unique building … creates a ‘community’ and [has] attracted one of the city’s highest-profile companies. [It is] a key piece to a much bigger jigsaw.”
William Tomlinson, development director, Cubex, said the “letting to Hargreaves Lansdown is the most impactful because it materially resets expectations for Bristol’s office market. As the largest city-centre deal in six years, it anchors a key regeneration area and brings a 2,000-strong workforce into the new urban core, driving sustained activity and confidence. … Delivering this against cost inflation and heightened ESG scrutiny shows genuine execution strength. In short, it is a lease that signals where the Bristol office market is heading, not where it has been.”
Chris Howell, director, Howell Commercial, said: “Hargreaves Lansdown is a cornerstone Bristol employer, and its long-term commitment to the city is a strong vote of confidence in the local economy. The Welcome Building delivers much-needed Grade A office space, reinforces Temple Quay as a premier business destination, and – alongside the University of the West of England, Bristol’s Enterprise Campus – creates a stronger sense of arrival for those coming into Bristol Temple Meads.”
They made it happen: James Brodie, managing director, Tristan Capital Partners; David Felman, director, Newsteer; Gary Logan, chief operating officer, Hargreaves Lansdown; Toby Pentecost, senior vice-president, Trammell Crow; Simon Price, senior partner, Alder King ; Dan Rees, senior vice-president, Trammell Crow; Alastair Roberts, director, Darling Associates, and Andrew Smith, partner, Knight Frank.