Opinion: Are they getting the message?
Logistics Matters Property Editor Liza Helps says at UKREiiF this year the message was loud and clear that the logistics sector is an enabler of trade and part of the economic infrastructure of the country, a critical part of national economic resilience – it’s very backbone.
It generates annual revenues of some £1.3 trillion, and contributes £187 billion a year to the UK’s GVA, employing 2.3 million people directly earning £5,000 above the average wage with a further 4.5 million in indirect jobs. For every £1 invested the return is £2.50.
In an era where social mobility is almost stymied especially if you have not secured a degree, the sector boasts that more than half of its CEOs started on the shop floor and in 2021 according to Logistics UK 35,000 workers were promoted to managerial roles- 63% of those without university degrees.
The sector provides vital entry level jobs requiring no qualifications for those who have not had the best start in life or are trying to turn their lives around with 87% of logistics workers receiving on-the-job training, creating clear pathways for career progression.
The variety and skills required in the sector are myriad incorporating everything from technicians, mechanics, warehouse staff and HGV drivers through to backroom support workers and tech developers.
It is at the forefront technological innovation through automation, robotics and the use of AI – basically what is not to like certainly those attending the Right Time Right Place session at UKREiiF sponsored by Gowlings with panellists from developer heavy weights Prologis, Indurent and Wilton alongside the East Midlands Freeport which has three huge strategic industrial and logistics sites in the heart of the Golden Triangle, were in favour.
But that is hardly surprising – a show of hands revealed that the vast majority of those attending were directly or indirectly linked to either the logistics property or logistics sector itself. Basically, the session was like a large echo chamber.
And that is probably the rub and why the powers that be and the public alike don’t seem to be getting the message – there doesn’t seem to be a co-ordinated push to promote logistics to the wider public at large especially when it comes to developing supply chain infrastructure, on a national basis.
There seems to be an ‘gap’ in the public consciousness that links getting stuff such as food, clothing, medicines, household goods, etc from one place to another usually the home on next day delivery requires space to store and sort it. It’s as if there is a childlike belief that it just happens like the washing up fairy.
It beggars belief that councillors go against planning officers rejecting planning applications for warehouse development on the grounds that it is not needed in a particular locality, that the jobs are poor quality, or basically that the campaign groups are extremely loud, well co-ordinated and even if they represent only a tiny fraction of the local population at large, their visibility in the local press would make it difficult to get re-elected.
Headlines abound about ‘monstrous’ development, blots on the landscape, concrete jungles, eyesores making residents feel like they are in prison camps and leaving them in tears.
National press headlines talk of over worked warehouse employees, barley able to leave their work stations to visit the toilet, in jobs that are inhumane – and there seems to be no counter to the argument.
And nowhere does this issue raise its head more pertinently than when it comes to planning. Because the sector has such a generally poor public perception, the developers promoting the schemes invariably end up having an uphill battle to disprove these usually factually incorrect perceptions over and over again.
Every time a planning application goes in for a logistics development then it seems as if the invention of the wheel is continually repeated – is it any wonder then that planning applications take so long to bear fruit?
The controversy these applications engender is frankly terrifying; recent commentary reported live via Facebook during a planning committee meeting by members of a campaign group against the development accused planning officers of bullying behaviour ‘railroading’ and bias, even calling it ‘undemocratic’ when those officers just doing their job tried to provide councillors with the facts about the development and what would happen should those self same councillors decide to go against planning officer recommendations which followed the recently updated NPPF.
The issue is not new, 25 years ago property consultancy Fuller Peiser carried out research into attitudes towards logistics – or distribution as we called it then – which found that there were myriad misconceptions, the sad point is that 25 years on there seems to have been no change.
