by Alex Catalano
Although the North-South divide looms large in the nation’s economic health, it is less evident on the ground.
According to Debenham Tewson & Chinnock’s latest research offering, the distribution of commercial floorspace between North and South is almost the same now as it was in the mid-1970s. “The changes that have occurred over the last decade have not tended to favour the prosperous South-East compared with the rest of the country,” say DTC.
Their report, The geography of commercial floorspace, uses Department of the Environment data on the national stock of properties to look at changes in location over the period 1974-85.
DTC found that warehousing and retail space tend to follow the spread of population, whereas industrial floorspace has a bias to the North. And although the office sector has traditionally concentrated in the South, the relative status of the North and South has not dramatically altered over the last decade, DTC conclude.
Indeed, the abscence of southern dominance is particularly marked in DTC’s “index of change” for industrial premises. This shows that a “Midland crescent” running north of London, through the East Midlands, across the north of Birmingham and down the M5 through Worcester and Gloucestershire has been the main area of growth in the long-run.
And, since 1982, increasingly peripheral locations such as Clywd, West Glamorgan and North Yorkshire have been industrial growth hot spots.
For warehousing and retail space, the growth spots are spread throughout the country, although in the case of warehousing the South East has a slight edge. In contrast, office space continues to concentrate in the South East, with only Birmingham and Bristol registering outside this area.
Instead of a North-South split, the picture that emerges from DTC’s analysis shows metropolitan-shire division. For all four types of floorspace, the stock has grown faster in the non-metropolitan areas than in the large cities. “The theme of decentralisation most clearly applies to the industrial sector,” DTC say. “While the metropolitan areas have lost between 10% and 15% of their floorspace since 1974, in both the South East region (excluding London) and, in particular, the rest of the country, industrial floorspace has increased.
“Floorspace stock has been slow to respond to short and intermediate fluctuations in economic fortunes,” DTC conclude. Property is a complex issue which responds to a wide variety of factors — it may be influenced, but it is not determined by broad-level economic change.
