Ongoing debate around High Street Rental Auctions often frames them as a carrot and stick approach – a new legal power designed to bring reluctant landlords to the table and reduce vacancy rates on our high streets. But as early adopters are already showing, the real value of HSRAs isn’t the auction itself. Instead, it’s everything that happens before an auction is triggered.
Recently, we, at Make CIC, hosted a webinar with representatives from two early adopter councils and some of the country’s most active HSRA trailblazers – Alison Shipperbottom from Bassetlaw District Council, Kitty Ward from Westminster Council, and placemaking consultant Ben Stephenson, Senior Fellow at the Institute of Place Management and a key contributor to national thinking on high street revitalisation. Their experiences shed light on what works when trying to bring empty shops back into use.
The auction should be the last resort
As Ben Stephenson set out, bringing empty shops back into use is rarely about a single intervention. It requires a sequence of steps:
- Identifying local shop vacancy
- Understanding local need
- Developing a pipeline of potential occupants
- Brokering deals with landlords and tenants
His key reminder? Every single one of those steps can happen without triggering a High Street Rental Auction.
This insight was echoed by Alison Shipperbottom from Bassetlaw District Council, who shared how the council’s work to create a vacancy register – and the community consultation needed to designate a high street for HSRA use – has already prompted landlords to re-engage and empty shops being let. Simply starting conversations has led to results.
Part of the HSRA process requires a local authority to formally ‘designate’ a specific street or area as a high street zone in order for HSRA powers to be applied. In Bassetlaw, 23 vacant properties within designated HSRA high street areas have entered negotiations since the designation process began.
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. This evidence has become a powerful tool in conversations with national retailers, enabling data driven decisions about setting up in Bassetlaw.
Community voice: an essential part of shaping our high streets
One of the most exciting aspects of the designation of a high street in order to enable a HSRA is that it gives councils more influence over who occupies high street space – not simply the highest bidder. This opens the door to curated high streets, shaped around local need rather than just filling spaces.
Stephenson shared that landlords are not always best placed to identify more innovative and non-traditional uses for high street properties. Local councils and community groups, in contrast, can broker new connections with partners, such as education providers, health services, and community organisations that want to embed themselves locally. Community consultation is a valuable opportunity to ask residents and visitors what they want, and need, from their high street – even where HSRA designation isn’t pursued, and community businesses are ideally placed to lead this work.
Place-branding and market confidence matter more than vacancy alone
A key insight from Bassetlaw is that empty shops aren’t always empty because landlords are the barrier. Increasingly, it’s a tenant-led market—prospective tenants are more selective, and are looking for spaces that are already well-presented and offer the right environment.
Bassetlaw has invested heavily in branding their high streets and warming up the market for new tenants, including national retailers. They’ve learned that fit-out grants are often more effective than traditional shop-front grants. While shop-front improvements can enhance appearances, they don’t necessarily change who moves in. Fit-out support, on the other hand, removes one of the biggest barriers for new independents and growing businesses – and can genuinely diversify the high street offer.
From our own learning, the shop-front grants can be a double-edged sword. One of our local shop keepers in Birkenhead, who received a shop-front improvement grant through the UK Shared Prosperity Fund that Make CIC successfully bid for, and managed, saw their rent increase once the works were completed. It’s a clear reminder that regeneration must be tied to protections and strategy, not just aesthetics.
Are HSRAs the right tool for every town?
Not necessarily.
Many of the vacant properties on our high streets that communities are most concerned about are in severe disrepair. Current HSRA guidelines make clear that given the timelines for auctions and the funding available to bring properties up to a minimum standard for occupancy, these buildings are often unsuitable and HSRAs are not a viable avenue for these properties.
Local authorities are also understandably cautious about the reputational risk of exploring HSRAs. Some are concerned that they could be perceived as “anti landlord”, while decisions about geographical boundaries for HSRAs often come with push back from the community: “why here” and not in another area in need of regeneration?
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.
HSRAs, then, are only one tool for changing our high streets.
Alongside HSRAs, the government is launching the new Community Right to Buy, which gives communities the first opportunity to buy assets of community value when they come up for sale, and extends the moratorium on their sale to the wider market from 6 to 12 months to give community organisations more time to raise funds and develop their business plans. Combined with Compulsory Purchase Orders and Community Asset Transfers, the challenge ahead isn’t a lack of legislation but navigating it effectively.
In Birkenhead our local authority has struggled to dedicate the resource required to deliver the full HRSA process, and we’re working with them towards achieving the first steps – designating our high street and launching a community consultation, to test how these work in our context. Next for us is the development of practical resources and toolkits for community organisations and local authorities to help navigate the legislation, what’s most appropriate for their context – and how to use the various tools and powers available to tackle vacancy and secure community asset ownership.
What we’re learning
What we’re learning from early adopter councils is that progress starts with conversation – with landlords, with communities, and with the market itself. Confidence matters. High streets that are clearly branded, well positioned and supported by data attract prospective tenants. Practical interventions, such as fit out grants and business support, remove barriers for independents and growing businesses, enabling them to thrive.
Above all, high streets work better when they are shaped with the people and local community who use them. Community insight together with local authority leadership and evidence, strengthens the case for investment, creating more vibrant and resilient high streets.
The bigger takeaway is this: High Street Rental Auctions can be a catalyst for change long before an auction is ever needed. They present a new tool for community businesses and local authorities to initiate conversations about vacant space on their high street.
