Labour's retail apocalypse

[tazdevil]

Labour intend to reverse the retail apocalypse but what businesses will they move into these abandoned sites? Mini cab offices, pound shops, kebab shops? Why will these businesses have any greater success than the businesses that couldn't live with the economics of the modern high street before?

[TwoWolves]

They could vastly reduce rates?

Thought not.

[DimPrawn]

Swindon High Street looks good to me.

A large crowd of people in hoodies kicking the boarded up windows seem to be enjoying themselves.

[scooterscot]

A similar action was taken in Berlin.. result? Massive transformation to local communities. Various art exhibitions to pop-up clothing / designers etc coffee shops.

I don't get why the UK allows landlords to hold the high street to ransom and make the area look like an demilitarise zone.

[tazdevil]

A similar action was taken in Berlin.. result? Massive formation to local communities. Various art exhibitions to pop-up clothing / designers etc coffee shops.

I don't get why the UK allows landlords to hold the high street to ransom and make the area look like an demilitarise zone.

It'd be good if they simply changed the law to make landlords give up a short term lease for free after a period of emptiness but this is the UK where opportunity is squandered and taken advantage of and no one wants to pay of so its not going to happen

[DimPrawn]

It's Britain where landlords are kind of like land owning Barons.

[BrilloPad]

Their plan to crash house prices will kill off estate agents. So then it will just be mobile phone shops.

Oh wait. They could legalize all drugs on condition they are only sold via the high street, not online. That would kill off bitcoin too.

[scooterscot]

Their plan to crash house prices will kill off estate agents..

Can't wait.

[FIERCE TANK BATTLE]

Those landlords must be raking it in from all those boarded up shops.

It's probably business rates that are too high rather than rent.

[Paddy]

A similar action was taken in Berlin.. result? Massive formation to local communities. Various art exhibitions to pop-up clothing / designers etc coffee shops.

I don't get why the UK allows landlords to hold the high street to ransom and make the area look like an demilitarise zone.

Business rates is the main killer of high street business. My two shops (I have freehold) the rates have increased by 1000% in ten years. My friend in London had his rates up by 1500% within the past ten years. The result is, the shops are now empty.

There is also a huge problem with rents and leases for commercial premises. The Leasehold and Freehold law with a Landlord and Tenant is archaic. In many provincial towns, the high street freeholds are owned by the Church of England and they are quite happy to sit on empty properties to keep rents high. Empty shops owned by the C of E often have their empty shops exempt from rates.

The law at the moment is on the side of the Landlords or Freeholder, rents are based on an increase in rent which in turn is based on the highest rent in the neighbourhood and the rent is set to be the maximum that a business can stand without going bankrupt. All this can be read on the RICS website and/or by reading Landlord and Tenant books.