For a city to work, it needs to have:

• enough industrial land and buildings
• the right mix of industrial land and building types
• serviced and zoned industrial land that is well connected and accessible.

Right now, the most common approach to forecasting demand for industrial land and buildings is wrong. This approach, which is used in employment land strategies, relies too heavily on inaccurate, generic, or outdated assumptions.

This can lead to local areas either:

• retaining too many parcels of industrial land that they don’t need
• not having enough industrial land in the right places to meet occupiers’ needs.

We believe a new approach to forecasting is urgently needed, one that produces evidence-based estimates from market-specific data.

In this paper, we outline our new approach and explain why current forecasting methods are not fit for purpose in 4 sections:

1. Our new approach
2. The current approach
3. How to improve the current approach
4. Our new approach in action