South Holland District Council leader floats idea to buy empty Spalding shops to control leases in a bid to attract new firms

Empty town shops could be snapped up and offered at reduced rents in a bid to attract more businesses to the area.

South Holland District Council leader Coun Nick Worth has floated the idea of purchasing empty units in Spalding to entice new firms to the town who may be put off by the ‘astronomical’ rents.

Spalding has lost a number of retailers in recent months with Bookmark shutting the doors of its Crescent store and the Original Factory shop, New Look, Robert Goddard and The Shoppe standing empty in Market Place.

At least six commercial properties in the town centre are being advertised for lease on Rightmove.

Coun Worth discussed the idea of potentially purchasing shops during a recent council meeting, in which members shared their views on Spalding Town Board’s ideas of how to give the area a make-over using the £20million Government Plan for Neighbourhood cash.

The district council leader, who is also a member of Spalding Town Board, said: “The plan behind that is that we can control the rents as we know in many of our towns shops are owned by people from outside the town and they tend to charge an astronomical amount of rent.

“We feel that if we would have control over some property to help bring in new businesses, retail or leisure, we can start to offer the first six months for 25% of normal rate and gradually build up.

“Something like that and there maybe opportunity for business rate reduction. We want to make it as easy as possible. With some of the premises, the top floor could be rented out for residential and that would benefit the night time economy.

“We are not experts on the retail side but we do want to encourage people to come in and fill some of the empty shops we have got.”

He made the comments in response to a question posed by Coun Mark Le Sage who asked if there could be any rate or rental support for new businesses.

The Spalding councillor said at the joint meeting of the Performance Monitoring Panel and Policy Develoment Panel: “Are we trying to encourage new shops to come in with lower rates or rent to bring that vibe back?”

The meeting was also told by director of economic development, Pranali Parikh, that potential projects would be brought forward for approval and that compulsory purchase could be in the mix along with incentivising occupiers.

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