Northern East Midlands

The Northern East Midlands is one of the most established industrial markets in the UK. The region covers several major urban centres including Leicester, Nottingham and Derby. It is well connected through major road networks such as the M1, A5 and A42, and the southern part of the region has long been established as the centre of the Golden Triangle. The region has shown strong levels of growth and is consistently one of the most active regions for occupier activity.

Occupiers including Aldi, DHL, Amazon and Armstrong Logistics all made large scale commitments to space in the region in 2020, making this one of the most active regions in the UK. Development activity was equally robust, with almost 3 million sq ft of speculative space completing, including the largest building developed in the current cycle –the 746,478 sq ft MPS1 building at Gazeley’s Magna Park, Lutterworth. This nudged the availability rate up to 8.1% in Q4 2020, although several of these buildings were under offer in early 2021. There is land in the planning process capable of adding further stock to the region, such as at St Modwen Park Derby and Dove Valley Park and we forecast an average 1.6% prime rental growth over the next 3 years.