Economic SystemRates, Vacancy and the High Street
Forty-one vacant units on Manchester Row, a relief scheme nobody qualifies for, and a loophole that makes an empty shop cheaper than a full one.
Manchester Row has 118 retail units. Forty-one are empty. Twenty-three of those have been empty for more than three years, which is not a market adjusting — it is a market that has been given a reason not to.
How the relief works
Empty-property rate relief exists so an owner is not ruined by a gap between tenants. It runs for three months, and it resets after six weeks of occupation.
Six-week occupation is a service you can buy. Storage operators provide it, openly, at a fraction of the rates saved.
The numbers
- Rates forgone on Manchester Row vacancies in 2024: $780,000.
- Budget allocated to the district’s small-business relief scheme: $0.
- Applications to that scheme, which has existed on paper since 2019: 31.
Three changes
- Raise the occupation threshold from six weeks to six months, which four neighboring districts have already done.
- Fund the small-business scheme from the recovered rates, at a level that lets it actually pay out.
- Publish the vacancy register monthly, by street, so the trend is visible without a records request.
A shop that is empty because nobody wants it is a market signal. A shop that is empty because empty is cheaper is a policy failure.
Frequently Asked Questions
The questions this one comes back to at the surgeries, answered in the same words we use there.
Because holding one costs the owner almost nothing. Empty-property relief was designed as a bridge between tenants and is being used as a permanent position, with 23 of the 41 vacant units on Manchester Row empty for more than three years.
A unit qualifies for a fresh relief period after six weeks of occupation. Six-week lets to storage operators are a recognized industry, and they are entirely legal.
Two ways. It brings units to market at rents that reflect demand, and the recovered rates fund the small-business relief scheme that currently has no money in it.
The four districts that have tightened the occupation threshold report no measurable change in ownership and an average fall in vacancy of nine percentage points.