Employment in London’s Canary Wharf financial district has almost quadrupled in the past decade, with the number of workers rising from 27,000 to over 100,000 in the space of 10 years, according to figures released by the Office for National Statistics.

Across London, the ONS data show that the number of people working for large employers increased 12 per cent between 2001 and 2012. Canary Wharf has benefited from this trend, with large banks and financial institutions relocating from the City of London to larger office blocks in the capital’s former dockland.

If Canary Wharf were a town in its own right, its developer the Canary Wharf Group claims, it would be one of the 20 largest concentrations of employment in the country. It forecasts that the number of workers will double to 200,000 over the next couple of decades – the equivalent of all the jobs in Cornwall.