With discussion often focused on the carrot and stick approach of High Street Rental Auctions, we look at the two aspects side-by-side. With procedures and funding well documented for the formalities of Rental Auctions, we question what are the equivalents for the softer, persuasive side.
Pilot approach receives cash boost
High Street Rental Auctions (HSRAs) are a relatively new power that has been piloted since December 2024. The approach has just been rewarded with a £10 million cash boost as part of Government pledges to support High Street renewal. They enable local authorities to require landlords to rent out commercial property on High Streets and in town centres that have been persistently vacant – defined as vacant continuously for 12 months, or for 366 non-continuous days in the last 24 months. The Government’s target for Rental Auctions is areas of economic decline, where there are high vacancy rates, and where landlords are not actively working to let their properties. A small number of local authorities have to-date, been operating ‘early adopters’ of the approach.
Limited capacity for curation by Auctions alone
The High Street Rental Auction process alone, provides limited opportunity for curation of the High Street business mix. Local authorities can set the use(s) for which a proprty can be let. This includes use as:
- a shop or office
- a restaurant, bar, public house, café
- public entertainment or recreation
- communal hall or meeting-place
The landlord though, can ultimately choose to accept any of the valid bids submitted. If this, for some reason does not happen, the local authority should then normally accept the bid with the highest annual rental value as the successful bidder.
Such a limied capacity for curation, can be partly rectified if the Rental Auction is part of a wider process.
A proactive approach in Bassetlaw
Bassetlaw District Council is one of the ‘early adopters’ of the carrot and stick approach of High Street Rental Auctions. Understanding local needs has been central to Bassetlaw’s approach. The council commissioned market research to build a picture of who lives locally, their spending habits, and how demand maps against their local high street offer. As the illustration above indicates, such a proactve approach is also supported by the work of North Notts BID, whose activities include maintaining a vacant properties register to promote opportunities for new businesses.
Such evidence and support has become a powerful tool in conversations with national and local retailers, enabling data driven decisions about setting up in Bassetlaw. In the initial stages in Bassetlaw, 23 vacant properties had begun the re-letting process within designated Rental Auction High Street areas.
Wider approach to tackling High Street vacancy
As demonstrated by Bassetlaw, the carrot and stick approach of High Street Rental Auctions should be part of a wider process, as outlined in the High Street Task Force guide to tackling High Street vacancy. The process that the guide describes follows four clear steps:
- Audit: Survey the location logging all the vacant units and ask: “what’s missing?”
- Engage: Speak with agents and landlords to understand the status of individual, empty units and check their back story to understand the prospects for letting and help build a ‘target list’ of empty & available units.
- Encourage: Seek to persuade would-be occupiers to take an interest in your place and suggest agents and landlords try new approaches including meanwhile use or a different type of occupier.
- Promote: Work with partners to promote the place, the opportunities and your progress, including details of available units on a single platform.
All of these steps can be delivered as carrots without triggering the ‘stick’ of a High Street Rental Auction.
Funding focused towards end of Auction process
Early adopters are already showing that the real value of the carrot and stick approach of High Street Rental Auction isn’t the auction itself. Instead, it’s everything that happens before an auction is triggered. The initial round of High Street Rental Auctions, however, weighted most of available funding for participating local councils, towards the end of the process:
- Preparation of a vacancy register: £3,000 to £8,000
- Refurbishment costs: anticipated to be approximately £50,000 per property.
- New burdens payment: up to £5,223 to cover the cost of applying the new powers including marketing, auction and legal costs
The expectation is that the recent announcement of £10 million of additional funding, will be used for comparable levels of support. This leaves the essential and preliminary carrots, largely unfunded.
£10 million Budget boost
In the 2026 Budget, the Chancellor confirmed an allocation of £10million for High Street Rental Auctions with refurbishment projects limited to a maximum of 3 eligible premises per local authority, capped at £200,000 per refurbishment project. As a guide, approximately £3,000 to £8,000 is allowed for the cost of creating vacancy registers; £1,000 to £3,000 for property condition surveys; and £3,000 to £8,000 for high street feasibility and consumer market research. This is broadly in-line with the earlier funding available to the early adopters.
Lessons for communities and councils
As explained in an insightful article written by Louise Cross of Make CIC, for Power to Change, there s a lot to learn about the success factors associated with the carrot and stick approach of High Street Rental Auctions:
“Operationally, as we’ve learned as a community business in conversation with early adopter councils, and partnering with our local authority to explore HSRAs in Birkenhead, using the HSRA powers requires significant collaboration across legal, assets, planning, communications, regeneration, and economic development teams in local authorities. That’s a significant undertaking – particularly when the goal may not be to reach the auction stage, but to build meaningful relationships with landlords.”
We agree with the conclusion in the article, that HSRAs are only one tool for changing our high streets. Alongside HSRAs, it’s important to be getting ready for the Right to Buy , which gives communites a better long-term option for acquiring and developing assets. Combined with Compulsory Purchase Orders and Community Asset Transfers, the challenge ahead isn’t a lack of legislation but navigating it effectively and raising the necessary funds to deliver change.
Further reading
Read about our tale of revitalising two towns in North Tyneside that involved detailed survey work and stakeholder engagement to help asess the priorities in attracting new businesses as part of wider place management and economic development.
Learn about teamwork tackling empty shops in a guest blog by Iain Nicholson MIPM, founder of The Vacant Shops Academy.
At People & Places, we pride ourselves on ‘bringing facts and faces to places’ through a joined-up approach. As our name suggests, we focus on the links between people and places. Put simply, we are in the business of bringing ‘more smiling faces to places‘.
