Self storage has mostly grown up where the most people live, because a site needs plenty of customers within a short drive, and building one means finding the right land and getting through planning. That picture is changing, though, and there may well be storage nearer to you than a quick search suggests.
Why storage gathers in cities
People like their storage close to home. In the Self Storage Association UK’s 2025 annual report, few customers travel more than 30 minutes to their storage. So a site depends on enough homes and businesses nearby, and cities have more of both.
Cities need it most. The same report says London has the largest concentration of stores, because higher population density and tighter space create a greater need for storage. The first UK sites were mostly in London too, as the history of self storage in the UK shows.
New sites take time. A new storage building, or turning an existing building over to storage, usually needs planning permission, and the SSA UK report names planning as the main delay to building new stores.
Why small towns are catching up
Storage is spreading beyond the big cities. The SSA UK reports that small container sites keep growing, particularly in rural areas, and that sites without a permanent member of staff, mostly smaller stores in regional locations, are becoming more common.
Small sites can also be easy to miss. The SSA UK points out that storage sites aren’t officially registered anywhere, and small ones can open in rural areas with little marketing or online presence. If nothing turns up for your own town, search the nearby towns too.
Where Wigwam fits in
We provide self storage in towns and city suburbs, in places such as Chipping Norton, Shipston-on-Stour, Warminster, March and Tewkesbury. You let yourself in with smart entry on your phone (at Chipping Norton, with your own PIN), normally from 6am to 10pm, seven days a week. A professional monitoring company watches our CCTV around the clock, and every unit has its own alarm.
Most of our units are inside our buildings, and at Chipping Norton, Shipston-on-Stour and Warminster we also have drive-up units and shipping containers.
To see whether there’s a Wigwam within easy reach, look at our locations or get a price online. If you’d like a hand working out which site suits you, call us on 0800 2545585.
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