It’s interesting to read that the Labour government is taking forward the plans for High Street Rental Auctions (HSRAs) – originally introduced by the Conservative government – and that they will come into effect next month, on 2 December.
Government minister Alex Norris MP wrote to English council leaders on Monday, and further details about the new legal powers were published on the gov.uk website yesterday.
As the news release explains:
“High Street Rental Auctions (HSRAs) will allow local leaders to tackle persistently vacant properties in city, town and village centres by putting the leases up for auction. This will boost the high street through a ‘right to rent’ commercial lots for businesses and community groups…
“The move will stop disengaged landlords from sitting on empty properties for more than 365 days in a 24-month period, before councils can step in and auction a one-to-five year lease.”
It sounds like an event in Wolverhampton on 21 November will share more details, and reveal who the “early adopter” local authorities are. I previously encouraged Durham County Council to get involved, though I do not know whether that authority is among those initially selected to take HSRAs forward.
Not just intransigence
Those of us who work on the ground in town centres all the time know that there can be a multitude of reasons why empty shops remain vacant for a long time, not just because landlords are being intransigent or unrealistic.
For example, a property may be vacant pending redevelopment, or perhaps the costs of bringing it up to a usable standard are simply unrealistic without some external financial support.
Engagement
In the context of all this complexity, it is sensible that the government news release makes the point that:
“Before putting a property to a rental auction, a local authority must first seek to resolve the vacancy by engaging with the landlord.”
That said, I know many local authorities are regularly trying to initiate these conversations already. I suspect the properties that councils will be targeting for HSRAs are likely to be those where absolutely no landlord engagement has been forthcoming to date, or, in extreme cases, where the ownership of a commercial property is not even clear.
Too often, people complaining about vacant units in their town will complain “Why can’t the council do something / reduce the rents / house the homeless?”, without understanding that the properties in question are rarely council owned.
HSRAs may be both a blessing and a curse in that in the future it will be harder for councils to argue that they are powerless to act on long-term vacancy.
Valuable tool
If the HSRA scheme is properly funded by government, it may well be a valuable tool for helping England’s councils secure action on those empty shops that are vacant for no good reason.
Perhaps too it will shine a light on the current broken model of commercial property ownership, and encourage a landscape where the norm is for local shops to be owned by local people invested in those communities, rather than by absentee landlords who may never have seen the properties that belong to them.
As Retail Cupid, I hope I can continue to play a useful role in matching up empty shops with the occupants that want to make productive use of those spaces!
