Reopening empty shops will ‘change face of high streets’

RED WALL high streets could be revived by plans to reopen 60,000 shops that have gone out of business, a new report has found.

Analysis by the think tank Onward, conducted by Will Tanner, who was Theresa May’s deputy head of policy, looked at the Government’s plan to force landlords of vacant shops to auction them rather than keep them unused.

It found that the plan could bring up to 58,000 high street units back into use. It would particularly help northern England, the Midlands and Wales, where vacancy rates are more than 60 per cent higher than in London.

Currently, 14 per cent of high street shops are vacant nationally, twice the average before the 2008 financial crisis.

In Rotherham, Grimsby and Stoke, one in seven shops have been vacant for more than three years.

Mr Tanner said: “Empty shops are a blight on high streets right across the country.

“They aren’t only a very visible sign that the local economy is in dire need of levelling up, they are also a blow to civic pride.

“Any tenant is better than no tenant

‘Empty shops are a sign that the local economy is in dire need of levelling up and are also a blow to civic pride’

at all so the Government is right to be taking steps to address this problem by forcing commercial landlords sitting on vacant shops to make them available to the community.

“Auctioning off empty units for the benefit of start-ups, community groups and charities would transform the face of high streets across the United Kingdom.”