The out of town retail sector in the East Midlands is continuing to perform better than the rest of Britain, a leading property research consultancy has revealed.
Research from Trevor Wood Associates shows that 7.2% of retail warehouse space in the East Midlands is currently vacant. This is the lowest vacancy rate across the whole of the UK. It is also a significant improvement on the area’s 10.1% vacancy rate in mid-2009, at the height of the financial crisis, but is still not back to its pre-crisis level.
Across the whole of the UK, Trevor Wood Associates shows there is currently 16m sq ft of space vacant in retail warehouses, of which 15.4m sq ft is second hand and 0.6m sq ft is newly built. This means that 9.1% of space in these types of schemes is empty.
Both of these figures are significant improvements on the situation at the height of the financial crisis in 2009, when 20.4m sq ft – or 11.8% of total space – was vacant.
The consultancy also shows that the UK retail warehouse market is continuing to grow, despite the tough economic climate and opposition often faced by out-of-town schemes. There is a development pipeline over the next two years of 1.15m sq ft while there is currently 176.6m sq ft of retail warehouse space in the UK.
This total has risen each year for the last decade, up from 147m sq ft in 2002.
Bulky goods schemes have the highest proportion of space vacant, at 10.5%, which reflects ongoing difficulties in markets such as furniture and DIY. There is 9% vacant in non-food schemes, and 6.9% vacant in schemes that could include food stores.
Over the last two years, most areas of the UK have seen improvements to their vacancy rates. The lowest void rates after the East Midlands are the southeast (8%) and Yorkshire & Humberside (8%), followed by East Anglia (9%) and Northern Ireland (9%).
Trevor Wood said: “These improved figures for out of town retail have been achieved despite administrators being appointed to Peacocks, Clinton Cards, Allied Floors and a number of other out of town retailers in the first half of this year. It will be interesting to see what effect recent events at JJB Sports have on the year-end figures.”
The highest vacancy rate is found in Wales (10.8%), although this is an improvement on the 12.8% of space empty in the second half of 2010. Other regions with high vacancy rates include Scotland (10.4%) and the north (10.2%), although both have improved significantly on vacancy rates of, respectively, 15.2% and 14% in 2010.
