The Covid-19 pandemic has demonstrated that our industrial and logistics facilities are a key part of the nation’s critical national infrastructure.
Alongside our supply chains, they support other important and growing sections of a strong economy and the way we live our lives by ensuring we have what we need at the right time. They are as crucial as the roads, rail, airport and port facilities needed to move goods around the country.
The sector also generates significant economic benefits supporting increasing numbers of high-quality jobs across the English regions. A thriving industrial and logistics sector is therefore critical to the government delivering on its ambitions to ‘level up’ across the UK with over 70% of demand for industrial and logistics space in the North of England and the Midlands.
Enabling the sector to reach its full potential is essential to the government’s aspirations to address regional inequalities but our planning system remains a barrier and is restricting growth in the sector by not allocating enough land in appropriate locations. If the industrial and logistics sector is to play its full part in levelling up, it is vital that we create…