Big Yellow gets green light on London stores

Self-storage firm Big Yellow has been given the go ahead for a further 307,000 sq ft of space in London. The group has got the green light on appeal for a 176,000 sq ft scheme next to the £1.3bn redevelopment of the Olympia exhibition centre in West Kensington, W14. The new facility is expected to open in 2027. At Staples Corner in Brent Cross, Big Yellow has secured a resolution to grant planning for a 131,000 sq ft replacement of its existing leasehold store. The store is expected to be ready for occupation in 2026. Customers of the existing store will be transferred to the new one, with £800,000 of annual rent liabilities extinguished. Chief executive Jim Gibson said: “The planning permission at Kensington Olympia is the largest and most important consent secured by Big Yellow to date. It continues our focus on opening stores in central London in highly affluent and populous areas where land availability is low and planning permission is formidably difficult to secure.” He added that the group now had planning on all but one of its London sites, which had “substantially de-risked” its pipeline of new stores and “opened the pathway to unlocking significant revenue growth”.