Industrial strategy will not deliver without industrial land

National strategy and local delivery

The Industrial Strategy gives very welcome prominence to industrial and logistics (I&L) recognising it not as a marginal land use, as has too often been the case in the past but as a fundamental part of the operating system that quite literally keeps the modern UK economy moving.

The Strategy describes freight and logistics as making a vital contribution to the UK economy and to the competitiveness of its eight growth-driving sectors. It notes that the sector contributed £79.8 billion in GVA in 2023, 77% of logistics employees in Great Britain are based outside London and the South East and every pound of sector output generates £2 of spending elsewhere in the economy. These figures place logistics in its proper context as a foundation for retail, healthcare, construction, manufacturing, public services and advanced production.

But national recognition is only the beginning. In planning, the difficult part is translating ambition into policies, allocations, designations, decisions and importantly delivering development in the right place and at the right time. The real test is whether the Industrial Strategy changes how plans provide for employment land, protect strategic locations and support industrial development in all its forms.

 

The renewed importance of I&L

I&L takes many forms with all too often specific locational requirements. From last mile urban servicing to strategic distribution, advanced manufacturing and emerging sectors such as data centres, gigafactories and specialist facilities linked to the green economy, life sciences and digital infrastructure. These uses are often compressed into broad employment categories that say too little about operational needs.

Location is of upmost importance in this sector: urban servicing needs proximity to the people and businesses it serves, and advanced manufacturing needs power, skilled labour and links to research clusters. If plans do not respond to those distinctions, they risk allocating land that appears suitable in policy terms but is not commercially or operationally deliverable.

The result is constrained supply in high-demand corridors, rising costs for occupiers and a planning system in which industrial applications are too often contested on a site by site basis.  All of which is a far cry from the certainty and strategic co-ordination that a genuinely up-to-date, evidenced based, plan led system ought to provide.  Perhaps more fundamentally, it raises a wider question: whether the planning system, in its current form, is equipped to deliver the scale, pace and spatial certainty required to support the ambitions of the Industrial Strategy.

 

Plan-led and supply-led

As a planning consultant, I support a plan-led system. But a plan-led system only supports growth if plans make positive provision for the development the economy needs. It is not enough for plans to contain general wording about employment growth while leaving the land supply uncertain and vulnerable to competing uses. Equally, there must be a balance between providing certainty and avoiding a system so prescriptive that it cannot respond to changing economic situations, technologies and market demands.

The NPPF gives local planning authorities a clearer basis for action. Planning policies are expected to have regard to the national industrial strategy and identify suitable locations for laboratories, gigafactories, data centres, digital infrastructure, freight and logistics. Importantly, the NPPF also refers specifically to storage and distribution operations at a variety of scales and in accessible locations.

That shift in language matters. But policy wording alone will not reshape investment patterns or improve delivery. The real question is whether those ambitions become embedded in the mechanics of planning itself through site allocations, informed by evidence bases, infrastructure planning and cross-boundary statements of common ground. Without that translation from policy ambition into spatial reality, the direction of travel risks remaining too abstract to provide confidence to investors, operators or local authorities themselves.

This is where alignment is crucial. National strategy, spatial development strategies, Local Growth Plans and local plans should point broadly in the same direction and reinforce one another, while still allowing sufficient flexibility to respond to local circumstances and evolving economic conditions. This then results in a clear, more resilient framework for decisions  about logistics corridors, safeguarding and modernising employment land, cross-boundary needs and the relationship between housing growth and the I&L space required to supports it.

The wider challenge is cultural as much as policy-driven. For too long, I&L development has been treated as a residual land use, accommodated where possible rather than planned for strategically. If the Industrial Strategy is to succeed, that mindset must change. The question is no longer whether the UK needs I&L space but whether the planning system is prepared to plan positively for the infrastructure that underpins a modern economy.

 

Good I&L policy is good placemaking

I&L should not be seen as the antithesis of good placemaking but as an integral part of it. Thriving places require homes, healthcare, education, open space, shops and transport, but they also require the infrastructure that enables businesses to operate and communities to function efficiently.

When planned well, I&L can strengthen rather than undermine ‘place’  It can reduce delivery miles, support lower-carbon freight, provide accessible employment and bring investment into infrastructure. Modern schemes are increasingly raising environmental standards through rooftop solar, EV and HGV charging, biodiversity gain and improved landscape treatment.

 

The role of LPAs

Local planning authorities (LPAs) should be updating employment land evidence with realistic market signals, avoiding reliance on historic data. They should distinguish between local industrial space, urban servicing, strategic logistics and specialist industrial uses, and should map corridors and clusters across administrative boundaries. They should also protect the right sites and allocate new land where need cannot be met through renewal or intensification.

Furthermore, they should plan infrastructure alongside employment land. I&L depends on power, water, digital connectivity, motorway and rail access, public transport for workers and, in some cases, proximity to ports or airports. The Industrial Strategy’s Strategic Sites Accelerator and Local Growth Plans should help, but investment will follow credible sites rather than broad statements of support. A site with clear policy backing and infrastructure planning is investible, whereas a general aspiration is not.

And finally, partnership will be essential. The sector operates at a geography larger than most local plans. A distribution hub in one district may serve homes, hospitals and businesses across an entire region.

 

Conclusion

The Industrial Strategy and the NPPF rightly elevate I&L from a marginal land use to a core component of the UK’s economic infrastructure.  But national recognition is only meaningful it its matched by delivery on the ground.

The real test lies in whether planning systems translate this ambition into land allocations, infrastructure and delivery on the ground. Too often, I&L remains a residual category in plans, rather than a strategically planned network of uses essential to how the economy actually functions.

What is needed is alignment: between national strategy, spatial development frameworks and local plans, so industrial growth is planned, not incidental. If I&L is not given proper weight in plans, the consequences will be investor uncertainty, constrained supply, higher occupational costs, longer journeys and missed opportunities for regional growth.

The next generation of plans and spatial development strategies must move beyond treating I&L as a residual use to proactive provision, grounded in commercial reality, supported by infrastructure, and reflecting the cross-boundary nature of modern logistics. Only then will industrial strategy become spatial reality and a genuinely investable framework for growth.