We’ve all been at it – shifting our shopping online even before it was actually illegal to go into shops. Pre-pandemic, 20% of our retailing was online, a proportion that surged to over 35% during lockdowns, before falling back more recently.
We talk a lot about what this means for the decline of high streets or the growth in delivery vehicles (I spent last week dodging a fleet of Amazon Prime vans in rural Suffolk). But the online delivery revolution is heralding a wider transformation of our economic geography.
This was spelt out by great new research from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) last week. It’s no surprise the number of business properties used for warehouses, logistics and transport has almost doubled in the last decade. The growth over the pandemic particularly stands out – a 21% rise since 2019 is more than four times the rate of any other industry.
Last year saw the highest new orders for warehouse construction on record – more than £5bn worth, doubling the pre-pandemic norms. These trends are transforming the industrial mix of some parts of the country – specifically the middle of it. The East Midlands alone accounted for 20% of that spending on new warehouses .
In 2011, not one local authority had transport and storage as its dominant industry, but 11 did by 2021. These include Rugby (next to the M1) and Peterborough and Doncaster (off the A1).
The ONS argues that we’re seeing a new “golden logistics triangle”, stretching from Birmingham across to Northamptonshire and up into Yorkshire.
So if your delivery is delayed, you now know who to blame: the (greater) Midlands.
• Torsten Bell is chief executive of the Resolution Foundation. Read more at resolutionfoundation.org
