You Won't Believe The Birmingham Commercial Property Neighbour Dispute From Hell

If a local private business wants to buy your site, and you can't reach agreement, you would expect that to be the end of the matter. Bad luck, shame our interests didn't coincide ... you know the drill.

But not in Birmingham, thanks to the city's massive shortage of industrial land and the need to keep jobs in the city.

The dispute centres on the 3.6-acre Phoenix Business Park at Brickfield Road in the Tyseley district of Birmingham. When neighbours Euro Packaging (based at No. 20) wanted to acquire a long lease on the Phoenix site a few doors down, they turned to the city council.

A report to Birmingham City Council's cabinet, due to meet on 24 May, will recommend that the council compulsorily purchase the site and by so doing end the negotiation decisively in Euro Packaging's favour.

Council documents show that Euro plan to acquire the site for a £14M-£15M expansion and have already submitted an outline planning application for the CPO site proposing 38K SF of new development.

Euro employ 480 people and want to diversify, creating a new business line which in turn creates another 300 jobs. A report to councillors said: “The options to expand within their current footprint are very limited due to the constraints of the existing site and the company has therefore approached the owners of the adjacent Phoenix Business Park regarding the acquisition of their site to facilitate this expansion. The only other option would be to consider relocation of the business outside of the city which they state is ‘a measure that we do not want to contemplate (although ultimately we may be forced to do so).’”

The leaseholder at Phoenix has been in negotiations with Euro for two years, has not agreed a deal and objects to the CPO.

As recently as July the leaseholder — unnamed in council documents, but planning applications were made by a Mr. Reilly from Solihull — applied to use the site for open storage and car parking, and was turned down.

The lease is 125 years from 1998, and the freeholder is the council.

The report to councillors states that after discussions with the leaeholder, Euro made an offer to buy in November 2016, but that progress then stalled. In early 2017 they asked the city council to intervene.

The report concludes that “the proposals would bring about the development, redevelopment and improvement of the site and as set out above would bring direct economic, social and environmental benefits for the area and the community. This will promote the economic, social and environmental well-being of the area.”

If the scheme is not agreed, Euro cannot expand and “they will look outside Birmingham and therefore the proposed investment and jobs will be lost to the city.

“There is no certainty that these negotiations would be successful, either in a reasonable timescale or at all, and there is therefore a risk that the company may contemplate relocation elsewhere,” the report said.