Self Storage on the Business Rates List: How Many Properties, Where, and What Changed in 2026

As at 16 October 2026, the Valuation Office’s statistics for 31 March 2026 show about 1,060 rating entries in the self-storage category of the business rates lists for England and Wales, with total rateable value of about £125.4 million. An entry is a unit of property on a tax list, not a store or a business.

Rateable value is the Valuation Office’s estimate of what a property could be let for over a year. This guide shows where the entries are, how they split by value and what the 2026 revaluation changed. It is general information, not tax advice, and it is about the category, not about any one property’s bill.

For bills, multipliers and reliefs, see our business rates guide. The Self Storage Association UK (SSA) counts stores, not entries; our UK statistics page sets out its figures.

How many self storage properties are on the business rates list?

About 1,060 rating entries in the self-storage category were on the lists for England and Wales at 31 March 2026. The Valuation Office counts them under special category (SCat) 721, which it labels “Self Storage Facility”. Its workbook notes define a rateable property, also called a hereditament, as “A unit of property that is, or may become, liable to non-domestic rating and thus appears in a rating list”.

The count comes from “Non-domestic rating: stock of properties, March 2026”, which HM Revenue & Customs published on 14 May 2026 under the Open Government Licence. The Valuation Office was the Valuation Office Agency until 1 April 2026, when it became part of HMRC. Counts are rounded to the nearest 10 and counts of 1 to 4 are suppressed, so every count here is approximate.

About 890 of the entries are in England and about 180 in Wales. Each count is rounded separately, so they sum to 1,070 (our calculation). The category is small: 0.050% of the 2,138,260 entries on the 2023 list and 0.177% of their rateable value, which is £125.4 million of £70.9 billion (our calculation).

At 31 March the category held about 510 entries in 2022, 820 in 2023, 900 in 2024, 940 in 2025 and 1,060 in 2026, as the first figure shows. Do not read that as growth in storage: the list changed after 2023, and the sharpest rise came within one list, before that.

The 2022 and 2023 counts are on the 2017 list, whose valuation date was 1 April 2015. The 2024 to 2026 counts are on the 2023 list, valued at 1 April 2021. Total rateable value rose 41.6% across the change, from £78.8 million to £111.5 million (our calculation). In our reading that is mostly the new list, not growth.

Even within the 2017 list, entries rose by about 310 between 2022 and 2023, and about 280 of the extra entries are in the lowest value band, which grew from about 140 to about 420 entries (our calculation). The tables show where those entries sit, not why. On 16 October 2026 they gave no reason for the rise, whether new entries, split entries or entries recoded into this category.

SCat 721 was introduced in April 2021, so the 2022 and 2023 counts come from its first two years in use.

The 2024 to 2026 counts sit on one list, so they avoid the change of list, though on 16 October 2026 the tables gave no reason for the rise there either, and they still count entries, not stores. Within the 2023 list, entries rose from about 900 to about 1,060 (+17.8%), and total rateable value from £111.5 million to £125.4 million (+12.4%). Both are our calculation, and the counts are rounded to the nearest 10.

The March 2026 release is the last on the 2023 list, and the Valuation Office says later releases will report on the 2026 list. The count on the 2023 list therefore ends with it.

Where are the self storage entries on the list?

Most of the value is in London and the South East, but the most entries are in the North East, where almost all are in the lowest value band.

London has about 160 of the 1,060 entries (15.1%) but £60.2 million of the £125.4 million of rateable value, which is 48.0% (our calculation). London and the South East together have about 300 entries (160 and 140, our sum of two rounded counts) and £87.7 million, or 70.0%, of the value. The North East has the most entries of any region, about 210, and 0.9% of the value.

The gap is the rateable value of each entry. Mean rateable value per entry is about £376,000 in London and £5,400 in the North East, from totals divided by rounded counts, so approximate, and £10,100 in Wales, as published. In the North East, 200 of the 210 entries are in the lowest value band, which carries £101,000 in total. In Wales it is 160 of 180, carrying £200,000.

London has none in the lowest band. It has about 120 entries between £51,000 and £500,000 and about 40 at £500,000 or more.

With little to go on, we infer that many North East and Welsh entries are individually rated small units, such as containers. The lowest-band entries average about £505 of rateable value each in the North East and £1.25 thousand in Wales (our calculation). On 16 October 2026 we found no statement of how many entries are buildings or containers.

At 31 March 2026, 197 of the 354 local-authority rows (council areas) are suppressed and 43 show a count above 0, so the open tables say little below region level. To count the stores around one site, see how to map a catchment and count the stores in it.

How large are the entries by rateable value?

They fall into two groups: about half the entries have a very low rateable value, and almost all the value sits in the higher-value ones.

Rateable value is the Valuation Office’s estimate of what a property could be let for over a year on the open market at a set date. Under the Valuation Office’s self-storage scheme, described below, it is worked from the local value of comparable industrial units, not from a store’s takings. For what a store earns, see our guide to whether self storage is profitable.

At 31 March 2026, about 510 entries are in the lowest band, at about £12,000 or under. They are 48% of the entries but carry £881,000 of rateable value, 0.7% of the total.

About 490 entries are at £51,000 or over: about 450 between £51,000 and £500,000, with £94.7 million of rateable value, and about 40 at £500,000 or more, with £27.9 million. Together they are 46% of the entries and carry £122.6 million, 97.8% of the value (our calculation).

Only about 50 entries sit between £15,000 and £51,000. The band from £12,000 to £15,000 is suppressed, which means it holds 1 to 4 entries.

That is why one average misleads. The median is £25,800 and the mean £118,300, but the median falls in the band that holds about 50 entries, so in our reading it describes almost none of them. Use the two groups, not a median.

The Valuation Office says its band limits are “in line with small business rate relief points and the multiplier structure”, which our business rates guide sets out for England.

What did the 1 April 2026 revaluation do to self storage?

For properties valued on both lists, it raised the category’s total rateable value by 24.4%, against 19.4% for all property in England and Wales, and that is a change in valuation, not in anyone’s bill.

The Valuation Office published a draft 2026 list on 26 November 2025 and the compiled list on 1 April 2026, and it values property at 1 April 2024. The 2023 list valued it at 1 April 2021. The Valuation Office’s data specification says the next list is due to be compiled on 1 April 2029.

In the Valuation Office’s compiled-list release of 1 April 2026, the category’s total rateable value goes from £125.4 million on the 2023 list to £156.1 million on the 2026 list. The release compares only properties valued on both lists, so new entries are outside it.

All property rose 19.4%, the industry sector 21.4% and its storage and distribution sub-sector 20.2%, so the category rose 5.0 percentage points more than all property (our calculation). The figure shows other storage categories: land used for storage rose 30.6% and distribution warehouses 17.8%.

England and Wales differ. In England the category rose 24.6%, against 19.6% for all property. In Wales it rose 11.4%, against 15.5%, so there it rose less than property generally.

The top band grew most. Entries at £500,000 or more rose from about 40 to about 70, and their rateable value from £27.9 million to £51.6 million (+85.0%), lifting their share of the category’s value from 22.2% to 33.1% (our calculation). We infer that most of the extra 30 are existing entries whose value rose past £500,000, not new ones, because the release links properties on both lists.

Wales has no entry in that band on either list, so every entry at that level is in England.

A change in rateable value is not a change in a bill. A bill also depends on the multiplier and on any relief, which our business rates guide covers for England. We did not check the multiplier or reliefs in Wales.

Big Yellow said on 18 May 2026 that, following the publication of the 2026 Rating List, it anticipates that its “like-for-like rates bill will increase by 8.5% in the year to 31 March 2027”, an increase it put at £1.8 million. That is one operator’s like-for-like estate and bill. It is not comparable with the category’s total rateable value, and not a forecast for any other store.

Which rating category does a storage building fall in?

In England and Wales, a purpose-built self-storage building, or a modern warehouse conversion, is normally valued under the Valuation Office’s self-storage scheme and coded SCat 721; other buildings used for self storage may be valued another way.

The scheme is set out in the Rating Manual, the Valuation Office’s guidance for its valuers, on a page called “Self storage hereditaments”. It covers “modern warehouse conversions” and “purpose built buildings designed to provide a wide range of secure self-storage facilities”. The page was last amended on 11 May 2026.

The code, SCat 721, was introduced in April 2021 to identify self-storage premises separately from general industrial and warehouse property. The provider is treated as being in “paramount control of the whole self-storage facility”, so the whole building it occupies is one entry, however many units it holds.

Containers on the yard of such a building are valued with it. The manual says the “value of the temporary buildings and/or storage containers and the like, must be added in addition to the land value”, and for the 2026 list it applies £95 to a standard 20ft container and £140 to a large 40ft one.

That passage sits in instructions for conversions and purpose-built buildings, so we read it as covering containers on such a building’s yard, not a yard of containers with no building. For container yards, see the container section of our business rates guide.

The manual also names cases the scheme does not cover:

• Pod sites. Sites “set up to allow individuals and companies to purchase individual units (pods) within the warehouse for investment purposes”, where the units are sold for long terms, are outside the scheme.
• Unaltered industrial units. The scheme is “not suitable for traditional purpose-built industrial units” that “have not had any significant structural alterations” and are used for self storage. They are valued in the usual way, from comparable properties.
• Converted office blocks. The manual says a “change of use to a self-storage business within a redundant purpose-built office block will not fall to be valued under this scheme either”. Such a building is valued by reference to similar buildings, using the scale and matrix of its previous use.

A property valued on any of those other bases is probably coded to another SCat, so probably not among the 1,060 entries. That is our inference from the Valuation Office’s statement that a SCat code “details the basis on which the property was rated”. On 16 October 2026 the tables did not say how many such properties there are, so the 1,060 probably leaves out some premises used for self storage.

To find the category in the data, use the SCat code. A primary description is no guide: the 2026 look-up links SCat 721 to six primary description codes, among them warehouse, storage depot, store and factory.

The Valuation Office also says a code can lag, because it may not be told at once of a change in a property’s use. Our conversion guide sets out how a converted building is valued.

Why is this not a count of stores?

Because an entry is the rating system’s unit of property, and that is not always one store, one business or one storage unit.

The manual treats the whole building the provider occupies as one entry, with any containers on its yard valued with it. So one entry can be a whole building, however many units it holds. If the many low-value entries are individually rated small units, as we infer, one entry can also be a single container.

A property valued on another basis is probably not in the category at all. On 16 October 2026 we also found nothing in the stock tables or notes that links an entry to one operator’s store, and no statement of how many entries are buildings or containers.

The count may therefore run above the number of stores, if small units are rated singly, and below the number of premises used for self storage, if those valued another way are left out. It tells you how many entries the Valuation Office has placed in one category, and no more.

How does the rating-list count compare with the SSA’s count of stores?

A rating entry and a store are different units, counted in different places, so the two counts cannot be set against each other as a share.

The SSA’s 2026 report, covering 2025, estimates 3,143 stores in the UK, container sites included. The Valuation Office counts rating entries in one category, in England and Wales only.

Dividing one count by the other would give a figure that is neither a coverage ratio nor the share of stores on the list, so this guide leaves that sum out. For storage space per head of population, see our site selection guide.

What can you look up yourself, and what can you not?

You can read the open statistics under the Open Government Licence and, within the lookup service’s terms, look up a property’s valuation. On 16 October 2026 we found no per-property list and no floor area for self storage in the open files on the gov.uk statistics pages we read.

• Open statistics. The stock-of-properties tables give the category’s entries and total rateable value by year, nation, region and rateable-value band, and thinly by billing authority. The 2026 compiled-list release gives the change between the 2023 and 2026 lists. Both carry the Open Government Licence.
• Floor area. On 16 October 2026 we found no open-licence floor area, or rateable value per square metre, for self storage. The Valuation Office’s 2026 floorspace statistics, published on 15 October 2026, leave SCat 721 out. The background note drops any category where “a unit measurement (such as number of bedrooms in a holiday home) has been recorded rather than floorspace data”, and its Table 1 lists SCat 721.
• Floorspace workbooks. On 16 October 2026 the 2026 workbook listed SCat 721 only among its excluded properties, with no floorspace, and the 2025 workbook did the same; the background note did not say what the unit is, and we found no SCat rows in the 2022 and 2023 workbooks.
• Per-property data. On 16 October 2026 we found no per-property list among the files on the stock, revaluation and floorspace pages, and we did not search data.gov.uk or other portals. The per-property data we found are the restricted downloads and the lookup service.
• Restricted downloads. The Valuation Office offers the rating list and summary valuation data for the 2026, 2023, 2017 and 2010 list years, as end-of-day snapshots with smaller change files in between. They are “only available under our restricted licence terms and conditions”, and the page says “An open government licence does not apply.”
• Terms of the downloads. Downloads are free, need a click on “I Agree” and may be passed to third parties only after telling them its terms also apply.
• What they may hold. The data specification lists a total area in square metres and an unadjusted price per square metre for each hereditament, so the restricted data may hold floor area for self storage. We did not click “I Agree” or download it. As at 16 October 2026 we cannot say whether SCat 721 entries carry those fields or are suppressed.
• The lookup service. As at 16 October 2026, “Find your business rates valuation” is marked Beta on the Valuation Office’s page. Its terms restrict publication of the information, and its use, to non-domestic rating purposes.
• What its terms allow: two uses. One is to let anyone “exercise their right to view rating assessments in the compiled rating lists”. The other is to let an interested person or a relevant authority review the valuation of assessments they have an interest in and “view the valuation of other assessments they consider to be comparable when reviewing the assessment of properties they have an interest in”.
• Who counts. The terms define an interested person as “the occupier of the property, or any other person who has a legal estate or an equitable interest entitling them to possession of the property or any part of it”, together with anyone having a qualifying connection with them and the Crown Estate Commissioners. A relevant authority is the local council in whose area the property is.
• Who else is included. An authorised representative of an interested person or a relevant authority, and a person or company providing either with services or information for the stated purposes.
• What its terms prohibit. Onward disclosure to a third party is prohibited except for those uses, and the user must delete the information when there is no longer a business need tied to them. The terms say the database and data are protected by “Crown Copyright and Crown Database rights”.

Whether a look-up made to judge a site you might buy falls within those purposes is for the Valuation Office or your adviser. We give no view.

What does this guide not cover?

• Scotland. “Rateable values are determined by the independent Scottish Assessors”, who keep their own valuation roll, and Scotland’s 2026 revaluation based its values on 1 April 2025, which the Scottish Government calls the tone date. On 16 October 2026 we found no self-storage count in the Scottish Government’s two 2026 revaluation workbooks, whose storage-like descriptions include “Warehouse”, “Store” and “Lock-up”. We did not search the assessors’ own portals.
• Northern Ireland. Land & Property Services assesses non-domestic property on its net annual value, and the current list became operative on 1 April 2023 on values at 1 October 2021. On 16 October 2026 we found no self-storage count on the two Department of Finance pages we read, and we did not use its property search.
• Bills. This guide does not cover any one property’s bill, the multiplier, reliefs or transitional arrangements. Our business rates guide covers England, and we did not check Wales.
• The restricted data. We did not download the Valuation Office’s rating-list files, so this guide says nothing about individual entries, their addresses or their summary valuations.
• What the entries are. As at 16 October 2026 nothing we read says how many entries are buildings or containers, how many stores or operators sit behind them, or how many self-storage businesses are valued under another code.

Sources

All read on 16 October 2026. Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

• Stock of properties: HM Revenue & Customs, Non-domestic rating: stock of properties, March 2026 (published 14 May 2026), with its statistical commentary and background information; the 2025, 2024, 2023 and 2022 releases.
• Revaluation: HM Revenue & Customs, Non-domestic rating: change in rateable value of rating lists, England and Wales, 2026 Revaluation (compiled list) (published 1 April 2026), with its statistical commentary.
• An operator’s statement: Big Yellow Group’s preliminary announcement for the year ended 31 March 2026, 18 May 2026.
• Rating Manual: the Valuation Office’s Self storage hereditaments page and its list of updates.
• Floorspace: HM Revenue & Customs, Non-domestic rating: business floorspace, March 2026 (published 15 October 2026), with its background information.
• Restricted data: the Valuation Office’s rating list downloads page and its data specification.
• Lookup service: the terms and conditions of Find your business rates valuation.
• Scotland: the Scottish Government’s Non-domestic rates revaluation 2026 statistics (published 30 April 2026).
• Northern Ireland: the Department of Finance’s non-domestic valuation and valuation lists pages.
• The SSA’s figures: our UK self storage industry statistics.