Not a new take on a popular daytime show (sadly – might work better) but the quest for regeneration of our ailing high streets and town centres continues unabashed with the latest governmental pronouncement being …..  drum roll please “High Street Rental Auctions”. 

Now, you may be confused and believe that such a thing already exists where willing buyers and seller, (or lessors and lessees if you wish to quibble), come together and transact for the lease of commercial properties in a room with a chap with a bow tie and gavel. However, the government has decided in its infinite commercial wisdom that this must be widened to allow for the local authority, in places where persistently vacant units exist, to put properties up themselves for auction to local businesses and community groups to allow for any high street use with a grant of a lease for 1-5 years thereafter. 

I am not going to tread on the toes of my property colleagues who I am sure can lament on the complexities of this given that one of the parties may not be what one might term “willing”, but from a planning and regeneration perspective this throws up some interesting things. 

Anecdotally it is councils themselves who often are the freeholders of persistently vacant units and land.  Are they the best people to be taking such an effort forward?  Before we get there though, should we not ask ourselves a more basic question, why are some areas prone to long-term vacant commercial units? It is a curious and rare breed of landlord who is happy to sit on empty units for any length of time in my experience. Perhaps there is simply a more basic market issue of there being too many units in our town centres?  Maybe it's tax?  Maybe it's transport issues? Perhaps retail might benefit from a contraction and concentration of commercial uses in our new age of home deliveries and internet shopping? 

The new Use Class E has helped somewhat in broadening out potential high street uses and this proposal is wider still, allowing any high street use including community use, pubs and restaurants.  However, one still needs to check the planning position: what if there’s a condition on use? They are not rare.  Is there a restrictive covenant on use?  Again, not rare.  Will a pub get a licence, or will puritanical locals demand that cheerful drunks be quiet after 9pm thus rendering the use unviable? Its not as if publicans are crying out for more units, quite the opposite it seems. 

This sounds like a lot of work to be honest.  Of course, councils must try to engage with landlords first to see what can be done; this is intended rightly as a backstop position. If this fails, then the auction process (which is quite long and complex) can begin.  Who will do this?  One doubts there is a spare bod in councils who can take this on.  Don’t worry though a cool £1 million has been put forth by the government (also one of the worst offenders for empty land and buildings as an aside) for this to be taken forward.  That’s £3,125ish per authority …. 

The reality of the situation is that this is a good idea in principle perhaps, but it is unlikely that we will see more than a handful of these, if any.  We all know how rarely local planning authorities use s215 Notices to compel landowners to attend to buildings adversely affecting amenity, and even how rare is it listed building powers are used to compel works…. because it’s draconian and sucks up resources.  £3k will go nowhere and this is tinkering without addressing the fundamental causes of so many empty units in some places.