Freelancers’ and Contractors’ Guide to London

Jul 19th 2010

If you work for yourself as a freelancer or do a lot of contract work in and around the capital, you’ll know from first-hand experience how hard it is to find quiet and peaceful places to quickly drop into for work.

This freelancers’ and contractors’ guide will seek to collect useful information for those working in London, such as free wireless internet hotspots, useful locations and more.

Free Wireless Internet Access Points

Searching for a place to connect to the internet can be difficult, especially if you don’t have a London virtual office. Fortunately, the helpful people at The Londonist have produced a collaborative Google Map, listing as many free London wireless internet hotspots as possible:

While this is a fairly exhaustive map, there are bound to be countless more places waiting to be discovered.

Public Places to Work

In a similar vein to the above map, the people at Herb Lester Associates have published an excellent London freelancers’ and contractors’ guide map, which is available to buy online for only £3. The HLA blog also features excerpts from the map, such as this post on working in The British Library:

“With power points and a variety of seating throughout, an atmosphere of calm industry, and generally so peaceful and comfortable that it takes some effort to fight the urge to wander around in slippers.”

London Virtual Offices, Touchdown & Hotdesking Packages

For freelancers and contractors working in London, the most sensible option is a London virtual office which are frequently available with ‘touchdown’ facilities (or hotdesking as it is also known).

Available at a variety of locations in and around the City, West End and West London, virtual offices provide a prominent address in a prestigious part of the capital, without the associated financial overheads of a physical office. Coupled with a hotdesking package to provide internet, phone, secretarial services and meeting rooms, once you’ve made the decision to use a virtual office, the days of camping out in coffee shops and bars will become a thing of the past.

Getting Around The City

The ever-helpful Google Maps has an array of user-created solutions for getting around London. The one embedded below handily has the locations of all the Transport For London stations in the capital:

Please feel free to add your own helpful suggestions, tips and advice in the comments section below.

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