Self-storage units continue to fill up space in Gloucestershire with plans revealed for a new 1,950 sq m store in Cheltenham.
They propose turning the former Huws Gray/Buildbase in Chosen Road into a site that will attract up to 15 customers a day.
The site has sat empty since the building merchants relocated to Eastern Avenue in Gloucester in February.
UK Storage Company has now applied to remove a condition from the building that will allow it to open a branch there.
It already owns and manages 29 sites across the UK, including a store in Bristol Road, Gloucester.
The industry tripled between 2005 and 2023 and there are now 2,915 self storage units in the UK according to the Self Storage Association (SSA).
Of these 1,135 use shipping containers or similar external units and 1,480 are purpose built or conversions.
Safestore is the industry leader with 139 stores, totalling six million sq ft. They are followed by Big Yellow with 109 stores, Shurgard with 89, Access with 58, Storage King with 44 and Flexiss with 24. The UK Storage Company sits seventh on the list.
In total there is approximately 64 million sq ft of self storage space in the UK and turnover of the industry reached £1.2billion in 2024.
Gloucestershire already has more than 20 sites with the old Cineworld in Gloucester opening as a SureStore earlier this year and the former British Gas site in Horton Road being taken over by Blue Self Storage Ltd.
These latest plans do not reveal how many units will be created but confirm the site has 26 parking spaces and is expected to result in 30 car movements a day.
It is unlikely the new business will generate many jobs for the area as the industry turns increasingly to remote operating.
The SSA report shows the average number of staff in a store is down to 2.6 with an estimated 15% of stores not having a permanent staff member on site. Instead 90% of businesses offer online bookings, 82% use CCTV monitoring and 68% actively use AI.
