A £10m government commitment to rental auctions will hand local authorities the power to intervene in high street premises left vacant for more than a year, shifting responsibility for empty shops from landlords to councils. The funding sits inside a wider £210m package aimed at bringing boarded-up and derelict buildings back into use and preserving community assets such as pubs and sports clubs. A dedicated high streets strategy is expected to follow later this year.
Under the scheme, councils would be empowered to take over the process of finding a tenant for long-vacant units. The government has acknowledged that this could mean landlords are forced to accept a lower rent than they might otherwise demand. It is precisely this transfer of decision-making power, from property owners to local authorities, that has drawn both praise and caution from elected representatives in Cornwall.
Noah Law, the Labour MP for St Austell and Newquay, described the measure as a “powerful tool” in efforts to rejuvenate town centres. He argued it would help places such as St Austell, where the vacancy rate stands at 30%. “People are really keen to see their local authorities take this problem by the horns so that we can definitely get them occupied,” he said. “The high street is still the very beating heart of our communities and I hope to see it remain that way.” On the funding itself, he added: “That £10m will go quite a long way towards getting some of these processes off the ground. So I’m quite optimistic about this.”
Not everyone sharing responsibility for town governance is convinced the mandate is broad enough. Ellie Allen, an Independent town councillor in Redruth, said supporters of rental auctions there had explored the idea but found that the constraints built into the scheme meant it had little scope to improve things. “For Redruth, the impact would be fairly limited,” she said. “A lot of the buildings are for sale, not for rent and the conditions are they have to be on the open [rental] market for 12 months beforehand.”
Her criticism goes to the heart of how the policy is designed. Because the auction power applies only to units available to rent, and only after a full year on the open market, it does not touch the substantial stock of empty premises that owners have instead placed up for sale. In towns where that pattern dominates, the tool available to councils under the new rules simply does not engage with much of the problem.
Allen also raised a question about where spending decisions should sit. Rather than rules set centrally, she argued, funding to improve town centres should be devolved to local communities so they can decide how money is used in their own areas. “We’re different from Manchester or Liverpool or smaller towns up north,” she said. “It’s frustrating when there are rules made and boundaries set that don’t fit this circumstance.” She added: “It would be nice if you could come up with a great plan to use the money that you think is the best for your town and just crack on.”
The debate in Cornwall illustrates a familiar tension in local government policy. Central government sets the framework, allocates the funds and defines the conditions under which councils may act; local authorities and town councils are then left to judge whether those powers match the reality on their own high streets. In St Austell, where a third of units stand empty, the MP sees a mechanism worth deploying. In Redruth, a councillor who has examined the same mechanism concludes that its eligibility rules leave too much of the town’s vacant property outside its reach.
Whether the scheme proves effective will depend in part on how the promised high streets strategy, due later this year, addresses the gaps that councillors like Allen have identified. For now, the £10m allocation gives local authorities a new lever, but one whose reach is defined by rules made well above town hall level.