‘PRIDE IN PLACE’ / HIGH STREET RENTAL AUCTIONS:
Our ‘audit, engage’ process and ‘place partnership’ approach to tackling high street vacancy are perfect companions to ‘Pride in Place’ programmes or if you’re considering adopting the new HSRA power for local councils in your town or city centre.
Do get in touch to talk more.
Tackling vacancy: a role for you…
“You can aim to halve your headline vacancy rate in 18 months;
some places will do that quicker.”
- Many places have more empty units than they need to;
- It’s not “just an agents-landlords thing”. The commercial property market has its own challenges;
- Experience of tackling empty shops projects is that the most impactful are those where all stakeholders – agents, landlords, businesses, community, council(s), cultural organisations, chamber and BID (where they have one) – work together on this;
- In our first project the number of empty units reduced from 23 to 3 in 18 months…
- …but it’s more than about numbers, it’s also about the mix of use types and this approach can impact that too.
Academy locations 51 and counting, including…
We are working with places across the country, from Aberdeen to Poole, Dovercourt to Carmarthen. The map below shows:
- Our early commission locations with purple pins;
- Where we are working in 2025-26 (grey) and 2026-27 (blue);
- Locations we have members of our new tackling highstreet vacancy Network, thvN, (coral red pins).
Our approach to tackling high street vacancy can:
- help reduce the number of vacant units in your town or city centre and so contribute to boosting ‘Pride in Place’,
- improve the mix of business types, and…
- tackle the negative impact on the look and perception of your place that empty shops can have on residents, potential visitors and would-be occupiers.
It gives you:
- a better understanding of the real story behind your headline vacancy rate, and…
- a clearer guide to the policies and projects your place needs to improve this key metric.
It’s also:
- easily transferable, so that…
- once learned and embedded, your council, BID, town team or local group can run it yourselves – and that’s crucial to the ‘Academy’ ethos. Sharing this approach so that local placemaking teams develop the skills to adopt and run it long-term, rather than it being a task & finish consultancy project.
“Iain Nicholson, Founder of The Vacant Shops Academy in the UK, has been doing the most serious, systematic work on storefront vacancy that I have seen anywhere.
– Rik Adamski, Storefront Renaissance League (on LinkedIn)
“As my partners and I work to expand the Storefront Renaissance League across the United States, we have been studying Iain’s work closely and looking at what lessons can be brought into the American context. The conditions here are not the same as in the UK, but the depth and scale of his work offer an important model.”
We have written a series of guides and briefing notes to support your work on key tackling high street vacancy topics. The current set is listed on our guides page.
It includes our ‘Meanwhile… use’ toolkit – a detailed 4-step guide to developing and running a pop-up shop or ‘meanwhile… use’ project.
To discuss how our ‘audit, engage, encourage, promote’ approach to reducing vacant unit numbers and improving the mix of uses can work for your place, and how the ‘Meanwhile… use’ toolkit has been successfully implemented in a variety of locations, please do contact us or connect via LinkedIn.
Quotes
“I found Iain extremely knowledgeable and very easy to work with. The systems and learnings put in place by The Vacant Shops Academy will help Ripon for many years to come.
Our vacancy rate has dropped from 12% to 8% during the time we have worked with the Academy, and we now have much better working relationships with stakeholders such as the local authority, landlords and agents.”
– Lilla Bathurst, Manager, Ripon BID
“The Vacant Shops Academy has helped us move from simply monitoring shop vacancies [in Fleetwood] to asking the right questions about why they happen and how we can work with others to address them.
“The ideas and practical suggestions for new uses for empty shops have been especially valuable. The templates and case studies have been extremely helpful in turning learning into action.… We’re now rolling [Iain’s] approach out across our other towns.”
– Mark Fenton, Economic Development Manager, Wyre Council
“Aberdeen Inspired found huge value in the work carried out as part of our collaboration with The Vacant Shops Academy, which placed a microscopic lens on the acute issues facing Aberdeen’s main street, Union Street.
Stemming from this… the establishment of ‘Our Union Street’ as the vehicle to progress interventions, and helped with the development of the Union Street Empty Shops Plan with £500,000 allocated to attract new businesses to occupy empty units and sow the seeds to reduce vacancy rates.”
– Aberdeen Inspired
“We found Iain’s practical understanding and deep placemaking experience to be a huge help in supplementing our efforts. Offering a collegiate approach and generosity of knowledge, his ‘audit, engage, encourage, promote’ methodology has helped us unlock stalled units, reignite and strengthen our city centre partnerships, especially with commercial agents, and ultimately, is helping us reduce the number of vacant units on our high street.
– Nicholas Brown (Head of Economic Inclusion and Business Engagement) & Ben Cluett (Economic Development Officer), Southend City Council
Iain is a trusted partner, who is honest, pragmatic and encourages us to trust the process. We hope other places can leverage his approach with the same success we have.”
“The work that [Iain] has produced has proved invaluable and will be used to help the BID and the city council deliver their high street regeneration plans including the retail strategy. Iain brought so much knowledge, advice and support to the project, and has been a real pleasure to work with.
The Vacant Shops Academy will be a part of the work we do moving forwards as the relationship we have built will benefit us all into the future.”
– Sunderland BID
“Iain has been fantastic to work with. His knowledge of high streets and placemaking has been so helpful to us at South Gloucestershire Council, and his recommendations were measured after spending time getting to know all our high streets individually.
We have taken Iain’s advice and are about to launch a vacant commercial property grant, as well as putting into practice many of his other recommendations. The support he has provided us after his commission had finished has also been second to none, including attending an event for us and linking us up with other authorities and BIDs.”
– South Gloucestershire Council
“Working with Iain in 2022 on the first vacant shops project for Union Street played a significant part in shaping the Empty Shops Action Plan and ultimately leading to the now highly successful Empty Shops Grant scheme which is playing a big part in driving down Union Street vacancy rates.”
– Ross Grant, Aberdeen Inspired
“The Vacant Shops Academy has played a key role in supporting Cheshire East Council in the creation and operation of a new grant scheme to support repurposing of town centre properties in Crewe. From initial advice and support in developing the business case, through to their well-honed approach in ‘audit, engage, encourage, promote’, their insights and encouragement have been crucial.
It’s not always been straightforward, given the challenges of engaging with property owners and agents, but together we’ve navigated a way through that is helping to reinvigorate and diversify Crewe town centre with a mix of vibrant and sustainable businesses.”
– Cheshire East Council
“We are extremely pleased with progress made so far and looking forward to what the future brings for Tredegar and all our town centres in Blaenau Gwent.”
– Team Manager, Regeneration Opportunities
Latest Blogs
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The power of “get the keys”…
Safe to say…! “It’s going to be the difference between units sitting empty longer on your high street and coming back to life with new occupiers.” If you’ve not yet started to take your tackling high street vacancy team into those landmark, large, sometimes heritage but now vacant buildings in your town or city centre, please do. How powerful this approach can be was emphasised for me on an inspiring and encouraging day in two Forest of Dean towns. We took a mixed public-private sector team into three units – two in Cinderford, one in Coleford – as part of… Read more
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Derelict Buildings Fund, “the ideal project partner”…
So 60 local councils now have £125m between them… “…to bring prominent long term vacant or derelict buildings back into productive community or commercial use.” Given our focus on tackling high street vacancy it was the most exciting of a series of Budget Day announcements. …especially as our approach and experiences from working on this issue with 51 locations so far looks to be the ideal project partner for places now in the Derelict Buildings Fund spotlight. Our ‘audit, engage’ process to establish which units are vacant, what the barriers are to getting them back in play and how they’re… Read more
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Agreeing your tackling vacancy ‘target units’…
What are the most intriguing empty buildings in your town centre…? The ones you’d most like to see back in use. It’s maybe because they’re landmark / heritage buildings. Perhaps they’ve been vacant for ages or in the worst state. Could be they had a previous occupier that made it one of your favourite, memorable visits. It’s the kind of thinking we go through with local teams when we’re building a ‘target units’ set for their tackling highstreet vacancy-focused ‘place partnership’ to prioritise, including making them high on the list for a “get the keys” project. …and it was a… Read more
