High Street Rental Auctions

When a unit qualifies

The premises must be in a designated high street or town centre, suitable for a high street use, and vacant for at least 366 days in the preceding two years, or for the whole of the previous year. The authority must also be satisfied that letting would benefit the local economy.

The notice sequence

• Initial letting notice — freezes the landlord's ability to let without consent for ten weeks
• An eight-week window in which the landlord can still let the unit themselves on qualifying terms
• Final letting notice — triggers the auction process, with a fourteen-day counter-notice period and limited grounds of appeal
• Auction of a tenancy of one to five years, on prescribed standard terms, at the rent the market bids

What it means in practice

For landlords, the answer is rarely litigation — it is asset management. Letting a unit before the notice sequence bites, on terms of your own choosing, is almost always better than a prescribed tenancy at an auction rent. For occupiers, the regime is a route into pitches that were previously being held empty, at a rent set by bidding rather than by a landlord's aspiration.

The prescribed tenancy terms limit what can be negotiated, so the condition of the unit, the fit-out cost and the works obligations need to be understood before bidding rather than after.