Southern East Midlands

The Southern East Midlands benefits from an excellent motorway network, one of the largest rail freight terminals in the UK and a strategic central location, meaning it has established itself as one of the UK’s key distribution locations, and is the first choice for many logistics providers. Recent large scale occupier deals have been pre-lets, but developers have confidence in starting construction speculatively. The schemes around Northampton and Kettering have the capacity to create new infrastructure and could make a material difference to the region’s rental profile.

2020 was another very strong year for occupier take-up in the region, with blue chip occupiers such as Royal Mail, Whistl, New Cold Logistics and Cummins signing significant pre-lets. Development activity in 2020 was similarly driven by purpose-built schemes. This in turn created some investible stock for investors and over £200m of warehouses were traded in 2020. The supply profile of the region continues to be weighted towards (good quality) secondary stock, but occupier interest in speculative schemes helped drive down the availability rate to 6.3% in Q4 2020. There are schemes such as Northampton Gateway, Northampton Cross, DIRFT, Panattoni Park Northampton, Midlands Logistics Park and Symmetry Park Kettering which have received planning permission and can deliver some well-located logistics facilities.