The largest deal to complete this quarter was to BP signing a 15 year lease across the ground, 1st to 8th floors (205,000 sq ft) at Cargo, 25 North Colonnade, E14 which provided a significant boost to take-up figures. Another notable deal was at TwentyTwo, 22 Bishopsgate, EC2 where Covington and Burling signed a 15 year lease across the 51st to 54th floors (85,768 sq ft).
This contributed to the Professional Services Sector dominating a 27% share of 2020 demand to date, up on the sectors share in H1 2019 at 12%. The Media Tech sector followed taking a 17% share. A reduction in larger deals has resulted in SME occupiers driving take-up levels in 2020 accounting for 56% of transactions comprising <5,000 sq ft spaces.
As expected we are starting to see increased levels of tenant space being released to the market as business offload surplus space. Tenant controlled space rose to 2.4m sq ft in Q2 2020, up 43% on the previous quarter (1.7m sq ft), reflecting an overall rise in supply to 13.2m sq ft, up from 12.4m sq ft in Q2 2019. This equates to a vacancy rate of 5.9%, which remains below the quarterly average of 6.5%. COVID-19 related construction delays have resulted in some 2020 completions being pushed back to 2021. As a result the Central London market is scheduled to see just over 3.8m sq ft new stock delivered over 2020. Of this, 57% is already pre-let.
Prime rents have held firm as a result of Low Grade A vacancy and a constrained development pipeline. Whilst no growth movement has been recorded this quarter, we expect downward pressure on rents over the remainder of 2020 as the full extent of the pandemics impact on the UK economy unravels.