Council approves new powers to crack down on empty shops

Westmorland and Furness Council has approved new powers to tackle long-term vacant properties across the region at a cabinet meeting in Kendal Town Hall on Tuesday (November 10).

The council will pilot the High Street Rental Auctions (HSRAs) across four town centres: Barrow, Kendal, Penrith and Ulverston.

HSRAs will allow the council to auction the leases of qualifying commercial properties that have been empty for over a year, or for at least 366 days (non-continuously) within a 24-month period.

The aim being to get landlords to rent out persistently vacant properties to new tenants such as local businesses or community groups.

Westmorland and Furness Council sat to discuss the new powers at the cabinet meeting on November 10

Presenting a report on the new powers, councillor Jonathan Brook, leader of the council and cabinet member for economy, said at the cabinet meeting: “These allow the council to bring persistently vacant properties back into productive use, helping to support businesses and strengthen town centre regeneration.

“And that’s an objective I’m sure that we can all get behind. The report proposes a pilot approach, focusing on those areas experiencing some of the highest levels of commercial vacancy.”

Among the four pilot locations, Barrow had the highest vacancy rate in 2026 (25.1 per cent), followed by Kendal (18.1 per cent), Ulverston (15.1 per cent) and Penrith (13.1 per cent).

The council said it will initially focus on the four locations to ‘manage resources effectively’ but would look to expand to other areas, such as Appleby and Shap, in the future.

Councillor Peter Thornton, cabinet member for highways and ICT, said the powers themselves won’t make shops any more viable and it is up to the public to spend money in businesses to keep them open.

He said: “The issue is that, as you just said chair, it doesn’t create a demand for shopping.

“It gives a route in which people can open a shop, and it stops landlords looking for higher rent because they perhaps have a portfolio locally that influences it.

“But, in the end, if we want to see shops on the high street, we’ve got to go in there and spend money in them.

“So, I would just say to the public, if you want the high streets to be vibrant places, you need to spend money in the shops when they open because this won’t make shops any more viable, it just gives them a route to get into an empty shop.”

Kendal Town Hall

Councillor Patricia Bell, cabinet member for adult care, struck a similar tone but said that was ‘no reason’ to stop trying to increase town centre footfall.

She said: “I do think we need to be mindful that with people’s changed shopping habits; it is unlikely that town centres will look the way they have done in the past.

“But that is no reason why we should give up on trying to increase footfall to the town centre and encourage the increase of businesses so I’m very happy to take the report.”

The new powers come after the government announced £10m of additional funding to support the wider rollout of HSRAs nationally in June 2026.

The use of the new-found powers in 12 ‘early adopter’ local authorities have seen 60 vacant units reoccupied without the need to proceed to auction since being introduced in December 2024.

Empty businesses have been a hot topic of conversation across the region with some towns seeing the number of vacancies almost quadruple in the last five years.

Bowness saw its vacancy rate jump from 4.6 per cent in 2022 to 16.2 per cent in 2026 whilst Ambleside’s jumped from 3.4 per cent to 11.5 per cent over the same period.

Top of the list for empty shops elsewhere in the region was Brough at 29.4 per cent followed by Shap at 25 per cent.

Although, as Cllr Brooks noted at the cabinet meeting, Brough’s high percentage only represents five empty properties due to the small size of its high street.