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Self storage business plan template.
The ten sections a UK lender expects, in the order they expect them — with the two things that actually get questioned called out: where your capital figures come from, and whether your break-even occupancy is reachable.
Download the template (Markdown)01 / The outline
Ten sections, and what each one has to do
The full outline is here rather than behind a download, so you can work from it directly — or check whether it is worth downloading at all.
1 Executive summary
Written last, read first. One page: what the business is, where, what it costs to open, when it breaks even, and what you are asking for.
2 The opportunity
Your catchment population within a 15–20 minute drive, the competing sites in it with their prices and apparent occupancy, and why this site. National figures are context, not evidence for your site.
3 The offer
Unit sizes and counts, licence fee per size ex VAT, access hours, security, and ancillary income. This is also where terminology has to be right: a licence to occupy, not a tenancy; a licence fee, not rent.
4 Route to market
How customers will actually find you, whether they can book online, and your opening pricing with the planned step back to full rates.
5 Capital requirement
Line by line with quotes, including the ones first-timers leave out: groundworks, power to the site, professional fees and a real contingency.
6 Operating model and P&L
Monthly revenue and fixed costs, ending in the number a lender will actually test — your break-even occupancy.
7 Fill-up plan
Year one is a ramp, not a steady state. Show it month by month, and show how many months of costs you can fund if it is slower than planned.
8 Risks and mitigations
A competitor opening, slower fill-up, a rates revaluation, key-person risk. Naming them is a credibility signal; omitting them is not.
9 Funding request
Amount, purpose line by line, security offered, and what repayment comes from.
10 Appendices
Quotes, site plan, planning correspondence, your competitor pricing survey, CVs.
02 / The two tests
Where plans actually fall over
Most self storage plans are rejected on one of two things, and both are arithmetic rather than narrative.
Lettable versus gross area. The published UK average of £27.40 per sq ft is revenue per lettable square foot. Corridors, stairs, reception and plant earn nothing, and the standard design benchmark is about 75% efficiency — so applying that rate to a building’s gross internal area overstates income by roughly a third before any other assumption is tested. This is the single most common error in a storage appraisal, and it is easy to spot from the outside.
Break-even occupancy. Storage costs are largely fixed, so the plan lives or dies on how full the site must be to cover them. If your break-even lands at or above the 74.5% national average occupancy, you are forecasting that you will beat the market — which needs a stated reason, not an optimistic ramp. Work yours out with the profitability calculator before you write section 6.
03 / Common questions