Never go back.

It’s a saying I think. And something everyone will have their own view of.

🤔 In #highstreet #placemaking and especially tackling vacancy, it’s always a good thing. To go back and see what’s changed and changing (and what’s not).

So to Banbury, a place I was part of a part-time #townteam (2014-18), and tho only to walk-see and not ‘audit, engage’ now, there’s lots to learn and consider.

💡 Questions like how many of our typical #TheVacantShopsAcademy ‘next steps’ suggestions for places that we are commissioned in might be on the table here…?

• building an inclusive, diverse, proactive, tackling vacancy-focused ‘place partnership’;
• upper floors ‘audit’;

🛍️ multi-unit #popupshop project;

• potential for arts & crafts, creative, culture, community, leisure, education, health & wellbeing as go-to new occupier targets;

🥬 indoor #market.

And more…?

If your place has too many empties, especially if that’s mid / high teens or even more than 20% of the total or the sqft tally, it’s a list (along with the other 15 or so elements on it) that’s well worth considering…!

What type of businesses would you most like to see take on vacant units in your town centre…?

🤔 It’s a question we ask a lot on #TheVacantShopsAcademy commissions because it’s important.

What would your residents ask for and support. What might existing businesses value most as neighbours.

🛍️ Answers we’ve had of late include: “a comic shop”, “somewhere to buy clothes”, “a replacement butcher”, “a baker and another bookstore.”

It’s important because it emphasises a key point of our ‘audit, engage, encourage, promote’ approach. The idea is first that the place chooses what would add to the mix, but also goes out and tries to recruit those businesses or organisations (because your ideal might not be #retail or #hospitality, it could be arts & crafts, creative, culture, community, leisure, education, health & wellbeing).

🧶 It means seeing if a #market stall holder wants a shop unit of their own, or there’s an online-only trader ready for the #highstreet or a business in a neighbouring town looking to expand, or you feature on a national brand’s #property requirement list.

🤳🏽 So, think about the vacant units in your town centre. What would you most like to see fill them….? What would be a fit for the space and your place. It’d be great to hear…!

🤔 So why – I was asked this week – are more places not working on reducing the number of empty shops they have…? Varying reasons.

• Other priorities;
• Lack of capacity, skills, resources, funding;

💷 Preference for the ‘masterplanning’ route or focusing on a few ‘big ticket’ projects hoping they will fix the whole vacancy issue;

• Pigeon-holing dealing with empty units as ‘just an agents-landlords thing’, or thinking that ‘death of the #highstreet’ means there’s no demand for empty units;
• Lack of belief that the council or BID can make a difference on this.

Or some combo of all those.

It’s why the story of Union Street, Aberdeen, where agents, landlords, businesses, community, council, BID and others are successfully tackling its vacancy challenge together, is so powerful.

📉 It tells us that you can have a headline vacancy rate significantly above 20% and drop it into the mid-teens.

Does your place need to do the same…?

Let us know…

There’s a really striking #highstreet statistic in the latest update about Union Street, Aberdeen.

📉 It says that the headline vacancy number there which had empty units totalling in the mid-40s at the end of 2022 is now in the 30s and potentially into the 20s – halved…? – by the end of this letting season.

This at a time when nationally the rate is stuck (at around 14%).

So why is Aberdeen seeing such a dramatic drop…?

Regular readers will know that since our Wantage town team project started in 2013 and empty units number reduced from 23 to 3 in 18 months, I’ve increasingly strongly believed that vacancy is tackled quickest and most sustainably when the place – agents, landlords, businesses, community, council(s) and BID where there is one – work on this together.

Aberdeen has that…

🎤 The BID commissioned our ‘audit, engage’ tackling vacancy approach and, with partners, set up what proved to be a really powerful Union Street Summit;

• The Council launched an Empty Shops Action Plan which included a significant tackling vacancy grant scheme, recently doubled in size to reflect uptake, and has just awarded funding from the UK Government through the UK Shared Prosperity Fund to support Aberdeen Inspired on an upper floors study to address another key issue;

🎨 Agents and landlords have re-focused on the challenges: getting more of the long-time empty #property onto market, investing, trying #popupshop options, selling to new owners with wider scope to move things forward;

🛍️ New #retail and #hospitality businesses have moved in, existing traders have expanded;

• The Our Union Street group – having started with a huge #community engagement and involvement initiative – are innovating with a major incentives package to encourage lettings, a volunteer-led empty unit refresh project and support for would-be new occupiers by using tech to imagine how their unit could look (the focus of the latest update which is well worth a read);

🗞️ The local paper – which positively supported the Summit and the various steps since – has been running a series of upbeat articles on incoming and existing businesses on the street.

💡There’s more too, and it’s all making Aberdeen a beacon…

..an illustration that vacancy is not something we need be stuck with, that we know how to tackle it. Seriously, we do.

Hopefully it’s the clearest of messages to other places with headline vacancy rates in the 20 per cents and high teens.

If that’s your place, do please get in touch…!

Could health & wellbeing be a new anchor for the #highstreet…?

It’s one of our list of ‘alternative uses’ to add to #retail, #hospitality and services that we encourage #TheVacantShopsAcademy locations to target as part of their tackling vacancy ‘next steps’.

🎨 The full list also features arts & crafts, creative, culture, community, leisure, education. But maybe health & wellbeing has the most potential.

🩺 Health services can take on some of our bigger units, they work in shopping centre, including the often tricky upper floors, as well as on our streets, and importantly they look like a good covenant to landlords and already have professional #property teams so may not need the ‘place’ support and funding that some of the other uses do.

A recent post by the 2025 Group in Grimsby talked about “an additional 120,000 visitors to the town centre annually” with the opening of their Community Diagnostic Hub.

🗝️ This is just one of an increasing portfolio of examples we’re seeing with great work being done by architect colleagues and #health services management to make this happen.

It’d be great to hear case studies from places making progress on this…

Arts & crafts, creative, culture, community, leisure, education, health & wellbeing.

🔑 A list of ‘alternative uses’ that could occupy vacant #highstreet units alongside #retail, #hospitality, services and (hopefully more for upper floors) office or residential.

All of them feature in our ‘next steps’ narrative suggestions as potential targets for locations we’re working with #TheVacantShopsAcademy.

🤔 But how much of a part can they play…?

• Might they be as significant as a potential new anchor is some places;

🏢 Are they candidates to take on large units or smaller ones. Could they take over several on one street or in a shopping centre;

• Will they offer the covenant landlords are looking for;
• Do they need extra support or funding to negotiate their way through the challenges of securing a space.

The answers are likely to vary by use type and with the places themselves.

🗣️ It’d be great to hear what #property colleagues think as well as those already making these uses a reality in our town and city centres.

📸 This theme was very much part of the conversation on an enjoyable and insightful out & about with #placemaking and #community friends in Swindon town centre, where you can see the contribution some of those uses are already making, and the kind of buildings that might be future options….!

Three encouraging pieces of news this week from #highstreet locations we’re working with #TheVacantShopsAcademy.

First from Aberdeen where the city council has “committed a further £500,000 to the Union Street Empty Shops Grant Scheme – bringing the total investment up to £1 million – given the level of interest.”

🪜 “The initiative, which launched in July 2023, offers match-funded grants of up to £35,000 to new tenants or landlords to support physical works required for new uses of vacant units.”

A way for the place to help overcome a common barrier to letting vacant units – the often-seen impasse between landlords and would-be occupiers over who funds the cost of readying the unit and fit out – is a feature of the majority of our ‘next steps’ suggestions to locations we’re working with, and was one of the priority conclusions in our set for the BID here. So it’s good to see there’s been enough take up to warrant further investment.

📉 In the same report it was noted that “the number of vacant units on Union Street decreased from 47 in September 2022 to 37 in February 2024.”

This was clear from our recent visit to start another ‘next steps’ initiative – a study of upper floors use, barriers and options – and is great to see. As part of that project we’re re-running our vacancy ‘audit’ with early signs suggesting that headline number is dropping further.

🔑 The other cheering update was from Sunderland where we’ve been working with its BID on our tackling vacancy approach since last summer. They’ve confirmed plans to build on the work to date by “pushing forward with our #retail strategy using the insight that the vacant property ‘audit’ has provided…working with landlords and agents and Sunderland City Council to make sure we transform our city in a more sustainable way which complements the massive investment that’s taking place.”

11 years experience of empty shops projects has shown that where agents, landlords, businesses, community, councils and BID where there is one work together on this, vacancy reduces more quickly and sustainably and the mix of uses improves, so it’s brilliant to see the progress in Aberdeen and Sunderland and I hope they’ll be a beacon for more places to adopt the approach…!

Our approach to tackling #highstreet vacancy is to focus on each visibly empty unit in turn…

• Is it genuinely empty & available;

💷 Is the previous occupier in administration or still paying rent;

• Is a commercial #property agent marketing it;

🪜 Is it a demolition or refurb project;

• Is it under offer;
• Are upper floors an issue;
• Is it a #popupshop or ‘meanwhile… use’ candidate;

🎨 Could arts & crafts, creative, culture, community, leisure, education, health & wellbeing be part of the solution alongside #retail, #hospitality & services;

• Or is the best we can do to hoard or vinyls it for now;

🗝️ Then, crucially, what are the barriers to it being let, how can they be overcome and what part can the ‘place’ – council(s), BID where there is one, businesses, community – play, alongside agents and landlords.

All our experience is that where this partnership is on the case, vacancy numbers reduce and the mix of uses improves more quickly and sustainably.

🤔 So what are the barriers for your empty units…? Do you have that partnership in place…? And what can it do to help…?

It’d be great to hear…

📸 Choice of images from an intriguing visit this week to the brilliant city of Sunderland where there’s always changes, investment and positive projects to check in on, and an amazing range of buildings to host the next new business or organisation occupier. Is that you…?

💡 If you wander your #highstreet in the early evening dusk and stay on later, are there signs on your upper floors of office teams at work or of town or city centre living…?

If not, is there un- and under-used space you could be making more of…?

🔐 If the answer’s yes, could it be resi, or workspace or #hospitality or an alternative use…? Creative, #community, leisure, education, health & wellbeing maybe…?

I ask after an insightful trip to the awesome city of Aberdeen to start the ‘audit, engage’ stage of our Union Street upper floors study with Aberdeen Inspired BID colleagues, thanks to funding support by Aberdeen City Council.

🤔 We learned a huge amount logging the upper floors, checking for lettings boards and especially by taking in some initial conversations with local architect colleagues.

🏢 It’s going to be fascinating to map what’s available there, explore potential use options, understand any barriers and start to map a strategic way forward.

Watch this (un- or under-used) space…!

🔟 Maybe, to no-one’s great surprise, my starter for 10 would be on vacancy. If we’re only allowed 1, then one of these…?

• Ask (and resource) every local authority to report on #highstreet vacancy numbers and work with agents, landlords, businesses, community and BID where there is one to overcome barriers to let to include…
• Give them powers to override national use class guidance and permitted development rules in line with local priorities;
• Create new local powers to end business rates avoidance and evasion and allow flexibility in the guidance to incentivise tackling vacancy eg around thresholds, ‘fit to occupy’, listed building charity (and CIC) and second unit reliefs;

🪜 Strengthen (and resource) powers to enforce and encourage funding schemes to help with minimum ‘fit to occupy’ standards on all highstreet buildings;

• Sweep away the additional letting requirements on councils when they are landlords so that local authorities are all beacons of good practice;

🤳🏽 Require every vacant highstreet unit to be marketed with a registered agent and the place to have a publicly available listing;

• Change the regulations which keep units empty when the previous tenant went into administration or left with time to go on their lease;

💷 Build funds to support #community right to buy including the co-ordination and #property skills to make it happen and be sustainable;

• Develop a series of pop up use projects leading to longer pilots based on successful examples for arts & crafts, culture, creative and community uses;

🏥 Mandate all NHS Trusts to work with their places to develop accessible first contact & diagnostic services in town centres.

🤔 What would you add / adjust…?

Especially keen to hear from commercial agent colleagues as you’re at the heart of tackling vacancy work…

…and from #placemaking friends with other specialisms for their 10…?

TheVacantShopsAcademy