Industrial availability at highest levels for 25 years
King Sturge’s Industrial and Distribution Floorspace Today survey, published today, reports more than 250m sq ft of empty industrial space available in the UK, more than at any point since the survey began in 1985.
The survey, which covers the six months to June, shows a concentration of available space in the south-east — excluding London — and West Midlands, with 15% each (graph 1), totalling more than 7m sq ft. East Anglia has the least amount of empty space, at less than 500,000 sq ft (2%).
However, the most dramatic increase in supply was in Wales and the north-west, where availability increased by 7.6% and 7.5% respectively.
New speculative space in schemes of more than 107,640 sq ft totalled 24.5m sq ft — an 11% year-on-year increase. As of July, speculative space under construction totalled 1.1m sq ft, focused in London (25%), the south-east (14%) and the north-west (14%) (graph 2). However, there was not a single building larger than 107,640 sq ft.
“We have seen a similar number of developments under construction, but the actual construction levels in terms of floorspace are down,” says Anna Behan, principal research analyst at King Sturge and author of the report.
The area with the most new speculative space in schemes of more than 107,640 sq ft was Yorkshire and Humber with 5.51m sq ft, followed by the West Midlands with 5.37m sq ft.
Based on average take-up since June 2007, this would reflect five years of take-up for deals of more than 107,640 sq ft in Yorkshire and nearly nine years in the West Midlands
Yields have either hardened or remained the same across most regions (graph 3). Although yields moved out by 0.5% in Scotland and the south-west, the UK average was a decrease of 0.23%.
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