Relocation special: Stuck in the middle

Footballer Peter Shilton (left) helps Grant Cochrane celebrate TNT's move to the Midlands

But the good connections come at a cost. According to a survey by property consultants King Sturge, rental levels for logistics properties in the West Midlands are the highest in the country outside the Southeast, at up to £5.75 per square foot. The East Midlands is not far behind at up to £5.25 per square foot. Both, however, are still some way short of the £6.50 to £8.50 you could expect to pay for similar sites in the Southeast, not including Heathrow, which is substantially more expensive again.

Saving grace
Office space, too, is not cheap, at least not in Birmingham, which suffers from a shortage of high quality new-build office space and as a result is one of the most expensive cities outside London. Elsewhere in the Midlands, though, rental levels are substantially cheaper than Birmingham.

Clark says that compared to the Southeast, companies will always make savings in the Midlands, in terms of recruitment as well as property. ‘You can probably save between five and ten per cent in the southern Midlands, increasing to between 15 and 30 per cent in the north of the region.’ Even Birmingham’s relatively high office costs were not an inhibitor for law firm Bevan Brittan. Already with offices in London and Bristol, it decided to open an office in Birmingham in 2001.

‘We already had a client up here and the more we looked into it we realised that there were plenty of other opportunities in the region, too,’ says Sara Woffenden, lead partner in Bevan Brittan’s Birmingham office. ‘There’s a strong core of quality law firms in the Midlands and Birmingham is at the centre of it. We can cover work right up to Cheshire and down as far as North London from here.’

The historically large manufacturing base of the Midlands, with consequent rich pickings for accountants and lawyers, means that professional services in general is a booming sector. Birmingham, in particular, has arguably the strongest professional services market outside London. Nottingham too has a dynamic professional services community. The Midlands is not just about the safety of established industries like transport and professional services, however. The East Midlands is ranked third in the UK in terms of investment in research and development and the Midlands as a whole has some surprising areas of niche expertise.

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