British Land : Ultimate Outdoors Choose HUT’s Deepdale Shopping Park to Open First Ever Store

Hercules Unit Trust (HUT), the specialist retail park fund advised by British Land and managed by Schroders, is pleased to announce that Ultimate Outdoors has selected the 250,000 sq ft Deepdale Shopping Park in Preston as the location for its first ever store.

Ultimate Outdoors, part of the Blacks and JD Sports Group, has agreed terms on a 10 year lease and is set to move into the unit that was previously occupied by Borders. The store, the first of its kind in the UK, will bring outdoor brands under one roof providing customers with a one stop shop for outdoor clothing and equipment. In addition to Blacks and Ultimate Outdoor own name brands, Tiso and Alpine Bikes will also stock their range in store along with Trek Cycles who will operate a concession.

In addition to the vast array of brands, customers will also be able to sit back and relax at The Ultimate Café, an in-store coffee shop operated by independent Liverpool based café, The Interesting Eating Company.

Matt Reed, Senior Asset Manager for British Land, said: "Retailers are choosing to launch new format stores across our assets thanks to their preferred locations, attractive catchments and high quality environments. We are delighted to be able to provide the location of choice for Ultimate Outdoors to open its first ever store. Ultimate Outdoors arrival at Deepdale demonstrates the attraction and success of the park, further adding to the strong occupier  line-up."

Lee Bagnall, Managing Director for Ultimate Outdoors, commented: "We chose Deepdale Shopping Park for the very first Ultimate Outdoors because it serves a very strong catchment and trades extremely well. We are confident it will provide a strong platform to grow our brand from."

HUT was represented by Harvey Spack Field and Wilkinson Williams.

Notes to Editors

Hercules Unit Trust
Hercules Unit Trust (HUT) is a Jersey-based closed-ended property unit trust with a fixed life which has been extended to 2020, and is subject to further extension with unit holder consent.  HUT's primary investment focus is major retail warehouse or shopping park properties with a value in excess of £20 million in the United Kingdom and, in particular, those properties that dominate their catchment area, offer a critical mass of retailing and, where possible, have the benefit of Open A1 planning consent.

HUT is the UK's largest specialist retail warehouse property unit trust with a portfolio of £1.5 billion.  As at 31 December 2013, the Trust owned and managed 19 retail and shopping parks, including Glasgow Fort Shopping Park in Glasgow and 50% of Fort Kinnaird Shopping Park in Edinburgh, providing around 4.5 million sq ft of retail park space.  Key tenants include Next, Boots, Arcadia, Marks & Spencer, Walmart, Kingfisher Group, Dixons, Home Retail Group and New Look.

British Land is HUT's property adviser and Schroder Property Managers (Jersey) Ltd is the Fund Manager.

Schroder Property
Schroders has managed property funds since 1971 and currently has £11.0 (€13.4/US$18.4) billion of gross property assets under management (at 31 March 2014).

All of the property funds referred to are unauthorised collective investment schemes as defined in the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000. Promotion of these funds is restricted and access to full information about these funds is only available to those exempt from the restriction.

For further information about Schroders' property business visit www.schroderproperty.com

About British Land
We are one of Europe's largest publicly listed real estate companies. We own, manage, develop and finance a portfolio of high quality commercial property, focused on retail locations around the UK and London Offices & Residential. We have total assets in the UK, owned or managed of £17.8 billion (British Land share of which is £12.0 billion), as valued at 31 March 2014. Our properties are home to over 1,000 different organisations and receive over 300 million visits each year. Our objective is to deliver long-term and sustainable total returns to our shareholders and we do this by focusing on Places People Prefer. People have a choice where they work, shop and live and we aim to create outstanding places which make a positive difference to people's everyday lives. Our customer orientation enables us to develop a deep understanding of the people who use our places. We employ a lean team of experts, who have the skills to translate this understanding into creating the right places, and we have an efficient capital structure which is able to effectively finance these places.

UK Retail assets account for 53% of our portfolio. As the UK's largest listed owner and manager of retail space, our portfolio is well matched to the different ways people shop today, from major regional shopping centres to single occupier locations. We are focused on being the destination of choice for retailers and their customers by being the best provider of spaces and services. Comprising around 25 million sq ft of retail space across 66 retail parks, 85 superstores, 15 shopping centres, 12 department stores and 77 leisure assets, the retail portfolio is modern, flexible and adaptable to a wide range of formats.

Our Office and Residential portfolio, which accounts for 47% of our portfolio is focused on London, We have an attractive mix of high quality buildings in well managed environments and a pipeline of development projects which will add significantly to our portfolio. Increasingly, our offices are in mixed-use environments which include retail and residential elements. Our 7.3 million sq ft of high quality office space includes Regent's Place and Paddington Central in the West End and Broadgate, the premier City office campus (50% share).

Our size and substance demands a responsible approach to business. We believe leadership on issues such as sustainability helps drive our performance and is core to the delivery of our overall objective of driving shareholder value and creating Places People Prefer.

Further details can be found on the British Land website at www.britishland.com.