If London is to recover from the pandemic and remain competitive on the global stage, it will need sustainable local jobs and a cleaner, greener, last-mile delivery network: both things that industrial logistics can offer. 

At Prologis, £54 billion of goods flow through our UK warehouses each year – that’s the equivalent of 2.6% of the UK’s GDP and growing, thanks to increased demand fuelled by the pandemic. The logistics sector can help to strengthen local economies by bringing much needed jobs and investment into an area. Yet, despite this and an increased demand for home delivery ( which is unlikely to drop back to pre-COVID levels), the capital’s ability to hold goods close to where people live and work has been eroded over the past decade, leaving London facing a potential last-mile delivery crisis.

For every extra £1 billion spent online, an additional 900,000 square feet of logistics space is needed. Yet over 1,300 hectares of land earmarked for industrial and logistics development were lost in London between 2001 and 2015, and with the New London Plan placing pressure on boroughs to release more land for residential or mixed-use development, the situation is worsening. 

There’s now an urgent need for National and Local Government planning teams to refocus and work with developers on employment sites and consider new ideas. Strengthening local communities and serving London’s growing population in a sustainable way is going to require imagination: that could mean delivering new housing developments with their own micro-fulfilment centres or building multi-level logistics properties that deliver the floor space required.