THIS weekend it was Small Business Saturday when we celebrate our small businesses and high street shops. We are lucky in Cornwall. We have a lot of small independent shops and businesses and creative entrepreneurs. Where I live in Falmouth is full of great indie shops and cafes from the Old High Street down to Arwenack Street. But even towns in Cornwall now have many empty commercial properties on our high streets - often owned by faraway faceless trusts and investment funds. The old banks on Market Street in Falmouth, for example, have been abandoned and are in a terrible state, but because they are private properties nothing can be done by the local council. One in seven high street shops is currently closed across the country.
If they could be rented at reasonable sums, despite the neglect of their owners, that would really help the high streets and business owners trying to set up and trade.
The government has announced that councils will be handed new powers next month to breathe new life back into high streets and transform long-term empty shops. If landlords won’t engage with local authorities, High Street Rental Auctions will allow the Council to tackle persistently vacant properties in city, town and village centres by putting the leases up for auction. This will create a ‘right to rent’ on high streets for commercial premises for businesses and community groups, after the powers come into force on December 2. It will stop disengaged landlords from sitting on empty properties for more than 365 days in a 2 year period, as councils can then step in and auction a one-to-five year lease.
This Labour government is committing over £1-million in funding to support the auction process which should boost trade and create jobs by bringing businesses, community services and customers back to the high street.
High Street Rental Auctions form part of a wider programme for high streets, with new measures to support local business:
- Freezing the small business multiplier, protecting 90 per cent of properties from inflationary increases in business rates.
- Permanently lowering business rates for retail, hospitality, and leisure properties from April 2026
- Providing access to finance – £250-million next year for the British Business Bank’s small business loans programmes.
- Increasing the Employment Allowance from £5,000 to £10,500 and removing the £100,000 threshold.
The government will also publish a new Small Business Strategy next year with more measures to support SMEs. In the meantime, the Government has also set a target of 13,000 extra police and PCSOs and to remove the £200 limit whereby shoplifters have been treated differently since 2014 and so they are commonly not pursued. High streets have been progressively harder places to sustain a business over the last decade. We need to support our high street businesses and we will make our high streets safer places to trade and shop again.