The Queen's Speech this week is already coloured by the weakness of the Tories who feel they need to cover a number of bases to try to 'Fool everyone all the time'. Part of the speech will be the ‘levelling up and regeneration bill’ to try to fill high street shops with businesses willing to embrace the new obviously lower rent culture if commercial landlords have allowed them to stand empty for 12 month or more.
If they can't or won't seek businesses to take on their premises they will only have two options in Michael Goves levelling up agenda, turn them into housing rapidly or the Council will be able to purchase them using their Compulsory Purchasing powers and let them out or auction them off.
This is a big hit for Councils, many of whom ran their estates departments down in the early days of austerity 12 years ago, but the bigger hit, experimented in by Goves department during the pandemic is the change of streetscene legislation which will allow businesses, pubs and restaurants etc., to use pavements for al fresco dining and guzzling which in the words of someone called Boris Johnson MP “will restore pride in our communities” This will cost Councils dearly as they currently charge businesses for pavement use and even for placing a board on pavements advertising their wares and is another huge ‘culture war’ shock from the lets have 10 Downing Street culture everywhere Johnson Government.
With one in 5 shops empty in the North-East of England and organizations who support small businesses concerned about an element of the bill which will bring derelict commercial shops onto the auction market in order to sell them on to new business buyers criticised as trying to blame commerce for the monetary policies of Government over the past twelve years the Legislation may partly founder on the rocks or will we see the broken tooth destruction of shop premises with unrentable or unaffordable to update condition demolished in the middle of our high streets?
Until we see what amendments the Government places into this new legislation we don't know if like empty office premises, shops will fall outside of the planning regime as office block conversions currently do, with no control over style or building regulation compliance or will Councils still sit outside of the growth of the Tories legalised ‘freehold scamming’ where huge charges are placed on freeholders for estate maintenance instead of grounds and pavements being maintained through Council Tax payments. Over 73,000 homes have been created from former office premises without any compliance with building or planning regulations.
But our interest is in the County of Northumberland where rumours abound that the Leader of Council, Glen Sanderson has already ‘done the deal’ to buy Blyth’s half empty Keel Row centre from the Duke of Northumberland’s estate so that his lordship is not exposed to the vagaries of the Party he invests in and that a major brewer is interested in buying a property on the Market Square in Blyth now that they can also have tables strewn across the outside of their premises but they expect that the views from the main highway aren’t blocked by the Tories planned and sponsored culture centre. Big changes ahead everywhere but expect the Council to move rapidly to gain access to empty shops in places like Hexham and Alnwick leaving Berwick, Amble, Ashington and its largest Town Blyth struggling to locate new tenants.
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