Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics on Business Rates

I started my high street retail career in the fine city of Oxford, so it’s a place that’s close to my heart.  It’s also a place where I first experienced the damage that can be done to an area by a local authority who not only takes its eye off the ball, they take the ball away and refuse to play nice with the local small business community at all.

We closed our last store where we had opened our first 20 years earlier, almost to the day, in Oxford.  It was a sad time for us, made ever more sad by a final tussle with the City Council who had refused us a change of use on the property so that we could finally sell the lease to the only people that wanted it – A Bureau de Change.  They finally relented hours before we were about to call the administrators in.

Not a great end to our Oxford experience, but one that had been marred over the previous 20 years by repeated mismanagement and lack of consideration for the high street.

From a dreadfully thought out one way system, to road works that took over a year to complete and decimated trade for years afterwards, to increasingly hiked, eye-watering parking charges, the city council couldn’t have more effectively shown my business, and many others, the door if they’d tried.

Eventually, after years of depleted useful footfall, and with a new shopping centre that we all knew was going to decimate the traditional retail areas in the city on the horizon, we finally took the hint and left.

Many other small stores and restaurants have followed suit since, and one of the more recent ones – Combibos Coffee – in Gloucester Green made their feelings clear in a newspaper article in the local press, where the owners levied the criticism that the city had “lost it’s sparkle”.

Read the original Oxford Mail Article Here

This chimed with me, not only because, as a jeweller, I think we once provided some of that sparkle, but also because as it mirrored my experience in dealing with the council a few years earlier.  My business had also applied for rates relief before we ultimately gave up on the city where we’d begun our high street adventure.  We were knocked back unceremoniously for our troubles.

The response to this article from the city council seemed to me to support my view, and that of many others in the local community, that they had not grasped the severity of problems in Oxford, particularly for smaller businesses, and were instead trying to wave away such criticism by making bland comments about supporting local businesses.

Moreover the councillor most closely concerned – Mary Clarkson – seemed to be suggesting the council were offering direct support for smaller businesses in the form of targeted business rates relief.

Read the Council’s Response

Intrigued by this claim I made a FOI request asking how many micro-businesses – nationally defined as operations employing 9 people or less – had the council given rates relief to outside of the normal concessions applied on a national basis as part of the new powers granted to local councils in the 2011 Localism Act.

The answer was virtually none.  The only rates relief given as a result of local initiatives came to approximately £40k and this was only to a group of businesses very narrowly defined by the council as operating as if they were charities.

The council made a subsequent claim to the local media that they had in fact given £31m of relief to businesses.  Closer examination of this claim revealed that they had included all the statutory government mandated relief schemes in that figure.  These included such things as transitional relief and charity relief.  As most of us will know, these are simple bolt on measures brought in by the government over many years, intended to reduce the business rates burden, instead of carrying out the root and branch review that everyone, including central government, knows is required.

My concern was that Oxford City Council, in attempting to obfuscate the fact that they have not provided any additional support, were undermining the argument that business rates do need a fundamental rethink.

I know that councils are cash-strapped by government cuts, so expecting them to provide support unaided is probably a tall order.  But in not making that point, and instead relying on empty cut and paste phrases, the council are missing an opportunity to engage with both the government and the business community on the issue.  I have to say that, for a Labour led city council, I find that doubly surprising and disappointing.

As the old truism goes, you can’t deal with a problem if you deny that there is one in the first place.

Unfortunately much of the local media have slightly missed this point and instead focussed on my criticism of the city as a “scruffy clone town”.  I think it’s arguable that it is, and that the reason for that is connected to the council’s apparent lack of support for smaller businesses that provide the diversity and distinctiveness that avoids towns and cities being described as such.  Their recent comments are really only a further indication of this.

I tried to correct this shift of focus in a radio interview I gave on Friday about the local press articles.  Sadly the council didn’t put anyone up to discuss the issue more fully, they will apparently be issuing a fuller statement in due course and I’m waiting with baited breath for that!  In the meantime, as you can hear in the interview they are relying on their claim to support local businesses using the same ‘cut and paste’ answers I accused them of in my letter.

Listen to the interview here

For those who are interested I’ve added the full text of my open letter below. At the time of writing I’ve received no response from the council or Councillor Clarkson.

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Councillor Mary Clarkson
Oxford City Council

18 August 2018

Dear Councillor Clarkson

I read with interest your comments in the Oxford Mail some weeks ago in an article entitled ‘Council hits back at coffee shop claims Oxford has ‘lost its sparkle’ (Oxford Mail 14th June 2018).  This was in response to claims by a local coffee bar, Combibos Coffee, and some other small businesses in the city that Oxford had lost its appeal to consumers and that the council was not supportive towards smaller businesses, specifically those classed nationally as ‘micro businesses’ employing 9 people or less.

In the article you rebuffed claims that the council had not done enough to support such businesses in the city.  Amongst a number of rather glib statements focussing on broad indicators such as footfall and changes to the high street you made the following statement :

“Business rates are set by central government; the city council provides business rate relief to many small businesses”

Whilst I’d not dispute that business rates are indeed set by central government, the second part of your claim surprised me.  It suggested that the city council has provided specific relief to smaller businesses in Oxford over and above those it is mandated to provide by central government.  I assumed you were referring to powers available to local councils under Localism Act 2011 that gave them the discretion to apply rates relief where required.

As a former trader in the city of over 20 years standing, I’d applied myself to the council for help on business rates around 2013 when my store in Cornmarket was suffering as a result of many factors in the city that were arguably caused by the city council.  My business was refused support out of hand at the time, so I was intrigued to find out what help you may have provided to others in a similar situation as you appeared to be claiming in the Oxford Mail.

As well as being a retailer myself, I’m also a commentator and journalist on retail matters in the national and business press.  Many of the problems I highlighted to the council 5 years ago were repeated by Combibos Coffee in the Oxford Mail article you responded to. These included poor management of shared public spaces, high parking charges, lack of easy access to the city centre and a disproportionate focus on larger chain stores in the city centre.

The latter problem has now been massively compounded by the opening of the Westgate Centre which itself is only partially let and has largely cannibalised traders from elsewhere in the city, leaving large holes in the main trading streets.  There appear to have been no contingency plans laid to deal with the devastating effects of this development on other businesses in the city, especially smaller operators, not least in the Covered Market which is losing ground and tenants faster than even the most pessimistic observers predicted.

The response from the council has been one of apparent lack of concern and in many cases an evident lack of understanding of how the commercial property market operates.  Your colleague and former leader Bob Price was regularly heard to claim that more empty shops would lead to a reduction in rental values.  Sadly that is not the case for reasons too complicated to detail here.  It’s a shame that he, and it appears you, are not better informed on such matters.

As a result of your claims in The Oxford Mail, I made a FOI request asking for details of how the city council had provided business rates relief to “many small businesses”.  The response to that request and subsequent clarification you provided to the Oxford Mail demonstrates that little has changed in the council’s approach since my days as a city trader.

Although the city council apparently have no records of how many businesses apply for discretionary relief, you were able to confirm that none had been offered such relief in the preceding 2 years.  I was told that micro businesses “would not normally qualify for Discretionary Relief in the Oxford City Area”.  So the facts seem to run contrary to your claims.

You do apparently offer some relief, but only to a very narrowly defined group of businesses which “act like a charity, but do not have charitable status”.  Even then, you have only provided this to an average of 8 businesses a year and currently provide it to 6.  I doubt that would fit any reasonable definition of “many small businesses” as you have claimed.  The only other form of locally administered relief is hardship relief, for businesses in temporary difficulties.  According to your own figures you haven’t provided this to anyone.  Again, hardly a figure anyone would reasonably describe as “many”.

Your further response to the Oxford Mail did however provide a long list of other business rates rebates and discounts.  These included Mandatory (Charitable) Relief, Small Business Rate Relief, Transitional Relief, Empty Property Relief, Rural Relief, Public House Relief, Supporting Small Business, Local Discretionary Revaluation Relief and Local Newspaper Relief.

To the uninitiated this sounds like an impressive list, but as I assume you know, these are all government mandated schemes imposed and essentially funded by central government.  None of them are initiatives created or provided by Oxford City Council as you implied in the article on 14th June.  The council has no choice, no say, and does not directly contribute financially in the application of these rebates.  These are not optional or locally created schemes and so it’s misleading and disingenuous for the council to claim credit for them.

Contrary to your claims, essentially no direct support exists for small local businesses in Oxford similar to Combibos Coffee to offset the unique problems in the city centre, many of which have been created by your administration.  It follows then that your comments in the newspaper and the assertions your department have made since are at best confused and at worst factually incorrect and misleading.

I am aware from my own experience that the council takes the view that discretionary support should only be offered when it returns a direct benefit to the city and I can to some extent understand that.  I also understand that all local authorities are under immense financial pressure as a result of central government cuts, and very few if any have given rates relief on a purely discretionary basis.  But ignoring this fact and the associated pressures on local businesses and making misleading claims about local business rates concessions does not properly highlight this plight.  Neither does it help the national debate on the inequities of the business rates system.

The underuse of discretionary powers also overlooks the value of the amenity provided by such businesses, not to mention the employment and direct contributions they make in the form of local taxation prior to running into such difficulties.  I would also assert that there is a responsibility on you as a council, especially an allegedly socialist led council, to ensure that smaller businesses who are simply looking to make a reasonable living are able to do so, especially when they are providing valuable employment to people in the city.  Yes they are still private enterprises, but their continued success has many knock-on benefits for the city.

These are usually owner-operated outlets working hard against ever diminishing odds to simply stay afloat.  They are not in the same league as the large well-financed corporate operations your council seems to favour, particularly those likely to be attracted to the new shopping centre, itself a development instigated and operated by large wealthy conglomerates.

It’s also noteworthy that, unlike many other councils considering such developments within their purview, you did not impose any requirements on the developers to provide smaller, subsidised units for independent operators other than the usual ubiquitous RMUs.  But considering you didn’t deem it worthy of ensuring the housing element of the development would be affordable for key workers, I suppose this is hardly surprising.

I have to say that I agree with the original assertion by Combibos Coffee that Oxford has “lost its sparkle”.  Having traded in the city since the early 90s I’ve seen it go from a vibrant, destination location to a scruffy, poorly managed, clone town, trading on its past glories.  Over the past 10 years it’s essentially been allowed to go feral by a council who seems to have no concept of how an historic city should be nurtured, shaped and supported.

I was very sad to have to close both my stores in the Oxford after 20 years commitment to the city and it saddens me even more to see other small businesses being forced out in the same way.  It’s little wonder that so many of them are collapsing, if your response to such events is careless platitudes and specious claims.

It’s a truism that you have to recognise there is a problem before you can find the solution.  That solution is not issuing blanket media statements with claims that do not bear closer scrutiny.  So I would ask that you at least be honest with the business community and the wider public and admit that as a council you have no schemes in place that support small local enterprise and perhaps consider setting some up.

Oxford could be a special place again given the right local political will, but from your repeated cut and paste answers it seems that will is not there.  Neither is there any tangible support for struggling small businesses, despite your claims to the contrary.

I’m happy to discuss these matters in more detail if you think that would be useful.  In any event I look forward to hearing your thoughts and seeing an honest clarification of the position of the council on discretionary business rates relief in the near future.

We Need Rates Reform Not Magic Rabbits

Maybe it has something to do with the proximity of Easter, but it’s long been the tradition for chancellors to pull a rabbit out of the hat during a budget speech, and last week there were leporidae leaping about all over the place in Westminster.

Speculation is that the abundance of feats of fiscal phantasmagoria this time, were simply there to divert attention away from the fact that George Osborne has spectacularly failed to hit any of his own arbitrarily set targets which we are supposed to be judging him on.  But whatever the reason, the showstopper for most retailers was the changes to business rates.

As usual, in the run up to this budget, there were calls from retail pressure groups for  there to be some serious moves towards rates reform, rather than yet more promises of reviews and recommendations.  I, along with other campaigners, joined that chorus, although I have to say that this time round I wasn’t expecting much in the way of harmony.  I thought the indications were there that we’d not see any real structural  change in the current broken system of local taxation.

On the whole I think I was right, but there were some more helpful than usual measures in George’s big red box this year.  Unfortunately though, on closer scrutiny they’re not quite as positive as they first seem.

Move to CPI

The one element of the package that could be described as structural was the move to CPI from RPI in the setting of rates multipliers.  CPI is the main indicator used in most other government departments to set things like pension increases, so it’s long been indefensible to use RPI for payments going the other way.

Indeed the last government’s own tame celebrity consultant, Mary Portas, had this as one of the key recommendations in her high street review back in the heady days of 2011.  Although, like many of her recommendations, this was also ignored.

So on the face of it, it’s a good move, until you realise that it’s not going to be implemented until 2020.  The subtext of that for me is that we’ll be keeping the same anachronistic system of setting a tax using notional valuations for at least another 5 years.  Something I had hoped would have been consigned to history some years ago.

Revaluation Cycles 

More evidence supporting that depressing assumption came with the plan to change revaluation cycles to 3 years rather than the current 5.  Again reaffirming that the Chancellor sees a long term continuation of the current arrangements, albeit in a slightly more responsive way.  Although, as he’s been seen to play fast and loose with these cycles when it suits him, including delaying the 2015 revaluation by two years, one wonders how much value there really is in this commitment.

Doubled Thresholds

The other course in this smorgasbord of rates tweaks was the doubling of the threshold before properties become eligible to pay business rates.  This was increased from £6000 to £12000 in one fell swoop, with tapered relief on properties up to the £15000 mark.  Something I’m sure Osborne hoped would give him the wow factor with the small business community.

And yes, it’s a bold move.  But considering the speed with which rental tones have continued to move, even through the recession, this change means the system will have just about caught up with reality only to see it speed off into the distance again.  This is especially true of the very high rented areas like London where decent retail properties below £12000 are going to be even rarer than magic rabbits.

The subtext of that for me is that we’ll be keeping the same anachronistic system of setting a tax using notional valuations for at least another 5 years

And let’s not forget that there are still many relatively small retailers who will continue to fall between two stools, in premises too large and over-rented to benefit from these changes and yet not large enough to have the economies of scale to cope with other challenges on the horizon, such as changes to pension liabilities and the new National Living Wage.

Someone Else’s Money

We also need to remember that in these times of austerity and dwindling local authority budgets, Osborne announcing these generous reductions in tax take is really him writing cheques he knows he’ll never have to cash.  As we all know, it’s always easier to play with someone else’s money.

Having told councils last year that they will be retaining 100% of business rates in exchange for further reductions in central government grants, making changes that will significantly impact that income seems like a breathtakingly cynical bit of game playing.  And this will have a knock on effect in town centres and local communities where small stores are trying to do business.

So, as much as I’m pleased that, by some estimates, as many as 50% of smaller retailers could be taken out of the current business rates madness altogether, I’m struggling to accept these measures as anything other than a sop to distract us away from the real prize of proper, lasting and equitable local taxation reform for all on the high street.

Piecemeal

Until we do have that, I can only see more piecemeal concessions being bolted on to a system already creaking under it’s own inefficiencies.  We still need a mechanism that’s responsive to local business conditions.  One that can be influenced for good and bad by local council policies and can be applied equally across all types and sizes of business.

My personal preference is for a system of local purchase tax, similar to what we see in many US stores.  But I know I’m in a minority in favouring that.  Indeed the very idea was discounted early on in discussions over reform last year.

Much as I support small retailers, I also believe that all sizes of business should pay into the local economy through such taxation.  But a system that took proper account of trading patterns, would mean that smaller businesses would pay an amount appropriate and, above all affordable, in their particular circumstances.

My personal preference is for a system of local purchase tax, similar to what we see in many US stores.

I’m happy for those businesses that will benefit from these changes, and I hope that they will stimulate local economies and help small independent retailers weather the continuing storm on our high streets.  But I remain concerned that these measures are not going to divert us from the goal of seeking a root and branch reform of a rotten system that should have been retired many years ago.

If anything I think the measures announced in the budget suggest that rates reform is going to be kicked into the long grass for at least the term of the current parliament.  If that’s the case I guess all we can expect in the immediate future are a few more rabbits emerging from that undergrowth, making a leap for the Chancellor’s top hat.

Could The ‘Living Wage’ Be The Living End For Some Small Retailers?

The number of major retailers lining up to announce impending pay increases seems to be growing by the day, seemingly inspired by the Chancellor’s surprising commitment to what he called a National Living Wage.

Cynics amongst us may say that one motivation for this uncharacteristically altruistic move was to wrong foot opposition parties such as Labour and The Greens who’ve advocated the pay reforms proposed by the Living Wage Foundation.

That said, George’s Osborne’s aspirations fall somewhat short of the LWF’s, but on the face of it we at least have a welcome move in the right direction.

The new rates don’t come in until next year but there may be an ulterior motivation for some larger retailers upping the wages ante now, and in some cases going beyond new statutory requirements. Not only does it gain them several kudos points in the PR arena, it also piles pressure onto their competitors to follow suit. Happily for employees, wages may just have become a much more competitive battleground.

Tesco for example are currently facing a crescendo of calls for them to chase those foreign upstarts Lidl down the Living Wage trail at a time they can ill afford to add further financial pressures to their already creaking P&L sheets.

Balance Sheet Shuffling

For most larger retailers though, paying the higher rate shouldn’t really be a problem. They may have to do some balance sheet shuffling, but it should only make a small dent in their profitability. Certainly there may be a few long faces at the next shareholder meeting, but a couple of extra glasses of champagne will probably help them see the positive side.

I have to admit to some bemusement at the recent whinnying from Lord Wolfson about Next’s wage bill increasing by £27m as they also announced profits of nearly £350m. For someone reportedly earning £4m a year himself, it seems rather churlish to begrudge his staff a mere 8% dividend on the profits they helped to generate.

Recent reports about retailers such as Sports Direct allegedly sidestepping even minimum wage regulations don’t do our industry any favours either.

For smaller businesses though the picture is somewhat different and there’s growing disquiet about how many employers are ready and able to deal with the additional demands that will be made on their businesses when the new system starts to be phased in.

For many independent retailers already struggling with overheads increasing every year, the Living Wage is going to be much harder to deal with, especially as we now see that the denouement of the Chancellor’s plot was to pave the way for a shredding of the tax credit system.

Even though that has for the time being proven to be a cut too far, I think it’s far too early to breathe a sigh of relief about future attacks on the low waged economy.

The reliance on tax credits by some businesses has been seen as perversion of the system, but in the face of scant support elsewhere, they  have tangentially helped small businesses by topping up the wages of their lower paid staff.

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For many independent retailers already struggling with overheads increasing every year, the Living Wage is going to be much harder to deal with

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Whilst I agree that for larger operators it’s difficult to defend such subsidisation, for some smaller companies it’s something of a lifeline.  That’s not ideal, and I know most small businesses would much rather pay a decent wage without pushing their valued workforce onto state assistance, but often there’s little choice.

I know of shop owners trading at the very margins of profitability, often only drawing a minimal salary themselves, sometimes well below the minimum or living wage. They can’t simply magic the money to cover additional wages out of thin air without help on other overhead priorities.

Business rates

Most notable amongst these is business rates, which was the subject of yet more empty political posturing at the Conservative Party Conference, followed by an announcement of a further delay on proposals for reform in the Autumn Statement.  There are now fears that this burden will be even more overwhelming in some areas after next years revaluation.

Many are also creaking under the weight of additional pension liabilities now being phased in. The alternatives for these retailers will be to further reduce staff numbers, break the law, or simply go under.

There are some councils who earlier this year proposed schemes where they would reduce business rates for companies who agree to pay the living wage.  However the devil is in the detail and many of the proposals only meet a small part of the additional costs imposed by the increase to the minimum wage.  Although I’m sure most small retailers would prefer to pay their staff more given the opportunity afforded by overheads savings elsewhere

Can’t pay Won’t pay?

There is of course the argument that if you can’t afford to pay a decent wage, you shouldn’t be in business anyway, but that seems to me to be an attitude that runs contrary to the ethos of the Living Wage principle.

Surely small business owners have the right to make a reasonable living as well as their staff, and options such as statutory profit or equity sharing could be considered for smaller employers and their employees.

I’m a supporter of the Living Wage and I’m delighted it’s finally starting to become a reality. But it can’t simply be waved into existence without some thought for the implications for companies who, no matter how much they may back the principle, may genuinely struggle to pay it.

Without a more comprehensive approach to the overall economic model that these businesses face, it’s likely that, for some of them, the Living Wage could easily become the living end.

This article is an updated and expanded version on my recent Retail Week column

Our Willy Wonka Chancellor Feeds Us More Fudge On Business Rates

Six and a half years after promising to reform the UK’s arcane business rates system, Chancellor George Osborne announced some sweeping changes at the Conservative Party conference on Monday.

However, instead of a carefully thought out progressive revision of local business taxation, we had yet more fudge from a Willy Wonka chancellor, eager to impress the party faithful with a plan so fiendish even Blackadder would blush at its audacity.

Currently business rates are levied by central government and collected on its behalf by local authorities who then pass the money to the Treasury. A portion of this is subsequently returned to councils to fund local services. This is the process of the Uniform Business Rate system, or UBR, a scheme instigated by Margaret Thatcher, partly with the intention of evening out disparities between richer and poorer areas of the country and re-distributing that wealth more fairly. Yes, even Maggie was a little bit commie on the quiet.

The problem in recent years though has been that rates have sky-rocketed in line with the rental valuations to which they are inexorably tied. The retail boom in the early part of the new century drove landlords to expect more and more returns on property. With large, heavily-leveraged retail chains eager to stump up ridiculous amounts of rent to be in key locations, the market mushroomed.

Consequently business rates have generated massive piles of wonga for central government and successive chancellors of every hue haven’t exactly been itching to relinquish the embarrassment of riches they’ve had bestowed on them. Indeed in 2012 alone, £350M was added to the rates liabilities of businesses amidst one of the worst recessions on record. During the last parliament the business rates take ballooned by over £1bn and the situation has been further exacerbated by the arbitrary postponement of the regular 5 yearly rating revaluation which should have taken place this year.

Pressure has therefore been mounting on government from businesses and retail campaigners like myself to do something about the damage this system is wreaking on our local high streets. This reached something of a crescendo prior to the general election, when once again the Conservatives promised that improvements would be made, even though they’d singularly dodged the issue throughout the previous five years.

So it was surprising that there was scant mention of rates in the emergency budget cobbled together by Osborne just after The Conservatives shock victory in May. I think I now we see the reason why. He’s obviously confused his party conference with budget day.

Devolution Illusion

Rather than kick this thorny little ball into the long grass for a few more years, Gorgeous George included in his keynote speech the wizard wheeze of passing the problem back to local councils under the guise of localism. The plan is simply to abolish UBR – the one part of the current regime that actually has any merit – and allow councils to hang on to all the money they collect from local businesses, regardless of the disparity that will result.

Apparently eschewing any further rounds of tokenistic consultation with business leaders, he’s neatly avoided central government having to find a solution to the whole soggy mess. In a move that sounds like it was thought up after a particularly good session in the House of Commons bar, he’s dropped the problem into the lap of local councils and walked away. Bang! Sorted!

However, Osborne’s claims about the benefits of his grand idea show just how staggeringly little he understands about the way the system actually works. Something that’s probably a teeny bit worrying coming from our Chancellor, considering we’re talking about a major plank of our national fiscal structure.

Bold Claims

He claims that giving Local authorities the power to reduce rates will help them attract new businesses to the area. In this bold statement he seems to be lamentably ignorant of the fact that councils have had the power to reduce rates since the Localism Act was introduced by his government in 2011. But like so many of these devolution illusions, giving people the ability to do something doesn’t mean they can actually do it.

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He’s dropped the problem into the lap of local councils and walked away. Bang! Sorted!

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Most councils struggle on the budgets they have already, any decreases in rates payments have to be taken out of that already dwindling sum and so hardly any have availed themselves of their new powers. Sweeping away the last vestige of Thatcherite socialism will only serve to exacerbate these problems, not make things better.

The Chancellor also seems to be unaware of the fact that empty properties still attract a rates liability. Landlords continue to pay rates on voids with only a small amount of relief in the early stages of a vacancy, so there’s little incentive for councils to reduce rates on empty properties. A problem that I once tried to explain to our erstwhile minister for the high street, Grant Shapps, without much success. It appears that obliviousness to the principles of local taxation goes even higher than I thought. Which explains a lot.

Rates will therefore continue to be an unavoidable burden weighing particularly heavily on small retailers, especially as, under Osborne’s new scheme, it appears that central government will still be setting the national levy as it does now. I say ‘appears’ as the details seem to be thin on the ground right now. Perhaps George lost the fag packet he wrote them on somewhere between the conference podium and the bar.

There is some talk about a system of re-distributing funds between richer and poorer councils, but again there are not many specifics beyond the idea that city councils who agree to have an elected mayor will be allowed to impose small additional levies for infrastructure projects, again something they can already do now.

There may be some scope for individual councils to adjust liabilities between different types and levels of business, but without the ability to increase rates on others beyond government limits, that will only work in one direction.

Rich and Poor

Well heeled and over-subscribed areas like London’s West End will reap huge rewards from this new regime, hanging on to far more money than they ever received in government grants. But they’ll have little reason to reduce rates liabilities. They will simply, and sensibly, bank the extra cash for a rainy day.

Meanwhile poorer authorities will continue to languish in the doldrums. After all, why would anyone want to set up business in a depressed area that is destined to become even more dilapidated as council budgets are swept away in the dust of the government’s on-the-hoof policy making?

With the balancing principle of the UBR gone, richer areas will become even richer and the poorer even more impoverished. Most councils will probably just hope that the amount they receive in newly retained rates payments will at least offset the amount that will be missing from their government grant. But in the most desperate areas that’s likely to be a forlorn hope. It’s a quid pro quo where the quids will only be going one way.

If nothing else I suppose Osborne has at least affirmed early on in this parliament that we’ll see just as little meaningful progress on local taxation reform as we did during the last. And while he basks in the glory of grand gesture politics and party political back-slapping, it seems our high streets and local services will have to continue to cope with this government’s ignorance and avoidance of the real issues for at least another 5 years. A prospect I doubt many people will find particularly sweet.

Are Small Retailers Becoming an Endangered Species?

The illegal killing of Cecil the lion has generated many column inches about the protection of endangered species. In an admittedly tangential intellectual leap, I’ve been wondering if we should be adding another dying breed to the danger list – that of the independent retailer.

It seems that just like many animal populations in the wild, retailers who colonise once abandoned areas and make them fruitful again, tend to attract the unwanted attention of bigger game looking for an easy kill.

Currently the country’s richest landowner, the Duke of Westminster is planning to bulldoze a chunk of the Pimlico Road, regardless of the fact that he’ll be rolling the heavy machinery over a raft of long established and successful independent stores.

Unfortunately for them, it’s not enough that the property is earning more than it’s keep and probably appreciating faster than Tracy Emin’s unwashed bed socks. The assets must be sweated, even though they’re already soaked in years of perspiration, squeezed from the brows of those who’s businesses trade from them.

Passport to Pimlico

The Pimlico Road has become a magnet for interior designers and anyone looking for something a little out of the ordinary. The antithesis of what chain stores provide, by their very nature. Yet buoyed, no doubt, by the increased footfall these niche stores have inspired, Grosvenor’s plans are reportedly to develop gargantuan retail units that they believe will be more attractive to larger international brands.

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Developers now fish in a gene pool that is becoming progressively more shallow, producing a retail mono-culture where they no longer understand or apparently care about the requirements for smaller operators, except as pop-ups of convenience or a bit of garnish to their main offer, usually in the form of RMUs.

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And this isn’t an isolated case. We’ve seen similar changes in character to destinations such as Burlington Arcade, Spitalfeilds and Covent Garden. In central London, galleries in Cork Street and Dover Street have been lost, and even bespoke menswear stores and tailor’s workshops that gave streets like Savile Row their iconic status around the world have been ground under the developer’s heel. While London may be the vanguard for these culls at the moment, it’s a strategy that’s starting to gain ground, literally, around the whole of the UK.

When I entered the high street over 20 years ago, I remember even the most hard nosed property managers being supportive of smaller operators. Not only did they appreciate your staying power, but they saw your business as providing that extra spark and diversity that kept their developments attractive to both consumers and prospective tenants.

Retail SSI

There now seems only to be a headlong pitch towards bigger, brasher and more expensive spaces with scant regard for anything a smaller retailer, let alone a start-up, could occupy. New malls for example now rarely offer spaces small or affordable enough for indies to even contemplate.

Developers now fish in a gene pool that is becoming progressively more shallow, producing a retail mono-culture where they no longer understand or apparently care about the requirements for smaller operators, except as pop-ups of convenience or a bit of garnish to their main offer, usually in the form of RMUs.

So where does that leave the small retailer of the future? If every time a secondary or tertiary location is popularised that’s taken as a cue to erase their existence, where will innovation and verve come from on the high street? Certainly not from the ‘me too’ generation of international brands, over-hyped and over here, rolling out virtually the same products and service models as every other chain store.

Perhaps in the same way that sites of special scientific interest are protected by government statute, we should have sites of special retail interest, where smaller businesses can be shielded from the worst excesses of re-development.And this isn’t just starry eyed idealism. Without space for new entrants into the retail landscape, where will our chain stores and national retailers of the future come from? We can’t expect every successful online business to have a yen for a more physical presence.

In the same way that vulnerable animals need to be protected from the sophisticated firepower of modern hunters, business innovation needs space to breed and expand, outside of what is rapidly becoming a very one sided fight.

Most conservationists will tell you that habitat erosion is one of the largest causes of extinction events. Maybe the world of retail property management also needs to learn that lesson before it’s too late.

This article was also published as one of my regular columns for Retail Week Magazine

Unrealistic Rents Are Risking The Future Of Our High Streets

The British Retail Consortium warned recently that a failure to deal with our broken business rates system could have a devastating impact on our economy.

In a stark prediction to the Chancellor, they estimated that up to 80,000 shops could fall empty over the next 2 years, putting 800,000 jobs at risk.

This is based on the assumption that 60% of stores facing lease renewals over the next 2 years may simply walk away from what has become an unsustainable commercial property model in the face of climbing rents and falling sales.

I’ve previously highlighted the perfect storm that is brewing up towards the end of 2015, with 40-50% of commercial leases falling due to for renewal.

The BRC’s predictions may be pessimistic, but there’s every reason to believe that a huge dent could be put in the retail economy very soon. This is especially worrying, considering consumer spending and the associated debt shift to private borrowing is what appears to underpin much of George Osborne’s plans for our economy over the next few years. Likewise many local authorities now rely more heavily on business rates as cuts in central government funding bite even deeper.

I’ve often been critical of the BRC. I see them as an organisation geared heavily towards protecting the big boys in the retail hierarchy, with only the odd glance back down the ladder towards small independents and medium sized chains. But on this occasion I’m in complete agreement with them, although for slightly different reasons.

Rates Burden

Business rates are of course a huge burden on high street operators and an issue that urgently needs to be addressed by the Chancellor – indeed it’s something I rarely tire of saying myself. But this has been the case for at least the last 10 years now.

However all this is largely irrelevant to the overall problem. The main reason why many store leases may lapse at the end of this year has less to do with rates and more to do with the ridiculously out of kilter valuations of the properties themselves.

It’s often conveniently forgotten that business rates are based on historic rent agreements. Many of them made by companies financed by the very same people who also bankroll mall developers and institutional landlords, both of whom have a vested interest in keeping rental expectations unrealistically high.

The driving force behind our inflated rating valuations are the equally avaricious demands by landlords who would rather see a store empty than see it’s theoretical value fall.

Bluff And Deception

Anyone who has had experience of lease renewals over the last 5 or 6 years will tell you that there’s very little sign of pragmatism from landlords or property advisers. Any hopes of the market being reset after the financial crash have long been abandoned.

This is partly down to the way that commercial property has become the vehicle of choice for the disconnected behemoths that are multi-national investment funds, but mainly because most such organisations are hip-deep in the same quagmire of over-leveraged debt that led to the spectacular economic swan dive we all witnessed a few short years ago.

There has long been a fragile framework of bluff and deception underlying the retail property market. More than any other commercial property transaction, store leases and rents are teetering on the edge of an abyss created by property advisers and fund managers who simply refuse to give any quarter to such mundanities as fiscal viability or long term tenant relationships.

The general principle seems to be that as long as they can keep the music playing, no one ever has to count the empty seats. The problem now of course is that a raft of impending lease expiries means there may soon be a lot more chairs and a lot less people willing to play the game.

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The driving force behind our inflated rating valuations are the equally avaricious demands by landlords who would rather see a store empty than see it’s theoretical value fall.

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There was nothing tangible in the recent budget about business rates reform, and that’s something that we must continue to demand from a government that has been consistently phlegmatic about, despite promises of action.  But that’s now only half the story. Without effective commercial rent and lease control, or some voluntary injection of common sense into the equation, these other costs will simply expand to fill the vacuum created by any reduction in the rates bill.

If we’re going to avoid thousands more empty stores and hundreds of thousand of lost jobs, we need a comprehensive review of the entire bricks and mortar proposition. In the meantime property taxation will only be a part of any retailers decision to stay or walk away.

Pressing The Reset Button On The Commercial Property Market

I have this annoying habit of confusing two recently formed organisations.

Firstly there’s the Future High Street Summit, set up by high street campaigner Clare Rayner to bring together experts and activists concerned about the state of the great British town centre. It currently takes the form of a conference, open to anyone, but especially grassroots imagineers looking to contribute to process of re-building communities around a social and commercial hub.

Then we have The Future High Street Forum, set up by the government, supposedly to build on the work of the 2012 Mary Portas review. They have a smattering of academics and some fringe involvement from trade bodies, but largely it’s composed of vested interests, property investors, large corporate retailers and politicians appointed by a government department with no readily apparent clue about what is actually needed to deal with the problems in our town centres.

As you may be able to tell, even though they have similar names, there is a big difference between the aims and achievements of both bodies. I was fortunate enough to be invited to the first Future High Street Summit earlier this year and found it a very interesting experience. Rather fittingly held in the futuristic environs of the National Space centre in Leicester, it comprised of two days of speakers, discussion groups and networking opportunities.

A number of knowledgeable speakers shared experiences and insights over the two days I was there. Some I agreed with, some I didn’t. But overall there was a good cross-section of exemplars and I’d imagine everyone found something to inform their own activities and responsibilities. I certainly enjoyed the networking sections, chatting with people I already knew and making a few new acquaintances, some of which I’m still in touch with.

Where’s Brandon?

One notable absence though was the then Minister for High Streets, Brandon Lewis. He’d been billed as a speaker for some months, and having missed my opportunity to fire a question or two at him at his whistle stop visit to Retail Week Live conference a few weeks earlier, I was looking forward to getting a second chance in Leicester.

Sadly though, at the last minute he discovered he had to somewhere else to be on that day. An important matter of state perhaps, or maybe it was just his turn to polish the Westminster cat. I remember checking his Twitter feed on the day to find out what could have been so important for him to break such a long standing engagement. I can’t remember it being anything earth shatteringly important. Certainly not as important as a conference bringing together people to discuss options for the very thing he was supposed to be responsible for at the time. Perhaps, like me, he got the two similarly named organisations mixed up and only realised his mistake at the last minute. That might have been an embarrassing admission for him, considering he was the chair of the government forum.

Whatever the reason the DCLG sent along a polished civil servant stand-in to read a prepared speech in impressive cut-glass tones. Rather more of a political treatise than an engaging presentation, it sounded like a lecture he’d already given a dozen times to the politically faithful. The questions piled up on my notepad, poised for moment when he would finally shut up. But, as his boss had done a few weeks before, he scuttled off with no time for in depth discussion of government policy. In the final analysis, perhaps the lack of engagement with attendees on both occasions speaks volumes about the government’s genuine attitude towards the issues.

We’re All Forum

Over the past year or so we’ve had a number of announcements from the Future High Streets Forum. Last year Government Minister Nick Boles suggested that hard to let stores could be re-tasked as residential properties, thus neatly erasing the problem of abandoned high streets and giving property developers free reign to make a lot of money out of the plight of inner cities.

No matter that the Forum was set up to help get these areas back into retail and other community uses. Let’s just solve the problem of over-rented, over-rated retail locations by turning them into luxury pied de terres. In one fell swoop this would provide hope to perfidious landlords who’ve backed themselves into a corner with fantasy loan to asset values and reduce the pool of available retail properties, thus inflating the market even more.

Their latest wheeze yet again involves the property hue of their spectrum of responsibility. A joint announcement from the Forum and the British Property Federation set out a plan for what Liz Peace of the BPF called a ‘collective ownership scheme’. The driving principle being that the disparate nature of property ownership on our high streets didn’t lend itself to the same sorts of controls available to the operators of shopping malls. Unusually for me, I agreed with Liz on this point. We do need curation on the high street. So many towns now are clogged up with the same usual suspect operators. from the ubiquitous mobile phone stores to the omnipresent coffee bars, many high streets are just plain boring.

Attack Of The Clones

The principle of the clone town is not new. It was identified some years ago and the phrase has long since slipped into the national lexicon, in many cases without much concern for what it actually means. Shopping centres have been quick to capitalise on this phenomenon and have applied fairly rigid tenant mix policies within their specific fiefdoms. I say ‘fairly’ rigid as it’s not unheard of for a big bucks offer to banish all concerns over duplicate use. You only have to look at Covent Garden and count the number of multinational perfume and body products brands selling virtually the same thing to see that.

But this more ordered approach to the shopping experience has paid dividends for mall operators and their tenants so it’s sensible that the idea should be applied to the high street. Of course the stumbling block is still the fractured nature of property ownership. Ultimately each landlord is more concerned with getting the best deal from a tenant, regardless of the type of use. What do they care if there’s already 6 other mobile phone store in town. If number 7 is prepared to a ludicrously speculative rent they’ll take their money.

The BPF’s solution to this is a system whereby landlords would pool resources and agree a common lettings policy. In one model being proposed they would each have shares in an overall property portfolio, shifting the focus away from individual lettings to a more holistic trading environment.

Curated High Streets

The idea of a curated high street is something I’ve long championed. But I’ve always proposed controls via more detailed planning laws. Instead of broad brush usage classes being factored into local plans, I’d have specific operator types defined by an elected team of high street managers, drawn from various parts of the property spheres. Town planners, local retail groups, landlords, property advisers and local consultants, maybe something like the town teams we already have, but with more accountability. There would be zoned areas within a well defined tenant mix policy which any new tenancy would have to comply with. This would prevent disconnected property interests simply chasing the money, regardless of duplicated use.

Of course this is something that could be handled by a self regulated body of property owners, but there would be a risk that vested interests could ultimately over-ride the what’s best for the local trading environment. Even if the income from these property groups was pooled by way of a shareholding collective, as suggested in one proposal from the BPF, There would always be potential for larger shareholders to dominate the group. And as I’ve described above, self regulation becomes rather malleable when there’s enough money on the table.

The other danger that I see from allowing such a collaboration between property managers is the possibility of terms fixing. Rents and other leasing policy issues could easily become entrenched, leaving tenants little room for negotiation in a target area. Instead of dealing with one landlord, they’d be dealing with a cabal. Lease negotiations are already skewed enough in favour of the landlords. We don’t want to be fomenting conditions for the construction of a cartel in all but name.

The Big Idea

Fellow town centre campaigner Dan Thompson and I have recently been kicking about a more radical solution to the problem of restrictive practices on the high street. We’ve posited the idea that empty properties could be purchased by a retail property trust and let to independent operators on a non-profit basis. That’s not to say the rents would be at giveaway levels – the idea would be to generate funds for other local projects as well as to expand the property portfolio – but rents would be kept sustainable with respect to other costs and the profitability of tenant’s businesses.

There would be some element of profit sharing involved along with principles of tenant mix, competition, and the curation of the overall trading environment. But small businesses and a variety of uses could be encouraged to keep an area varied and vibrant.

Rents would be pegged to factors other than the usual relentless pursuit of asset valuation. That way we could ensure some longevity for both the local trading environment and the businesses within it. Moreover pioneering entrepreneurs who move into the poorer trading zones, and then revitalise them through their own creativity, innovation and bloody hard work would get to reap the benefits when the locale becomes trendy and profitable. Rather than landlords immediately following the money and moving in yet more coffee bars, mobile phone shops and anyone else who dangles a big wad of cash in their general direction.

Ultimately the goal would be to press the reset button on the commercial property market, providing some alternative dimension to the rental tone and thus undermining the closed shop rent review stitch ups that usually lead to ratcheting rents and more literally closed shops.

I’m proposing a return to the days when landlords and property owners worked in conjunction with tenants to foster a long term relationship. Both were happy to receive realistic returns on their investments and were able to plan for the future, rather than constantly watching over their shoulder waiting for the next rent review or feverishly calculating the chances of your own survival when the shop next door is let at a blue sky rent that you know you’ll never be able to afford.

You can call me naive – indeed somebody did on Twitter shortly after I revealed this idea in my Retail Week column last week – but I really believe that if we’re to encourage future generations of high street pioneers, we need a cultural shift away from the idea that commercial property is the investment gift that keeps on giving.

In my view, the day landlords swapped the value of a solid reliable tenancy for beliefs in such fairytale concepts as upwards only rent reviews and ever increasing portfolio values was the day our high streets started to die.

So there you have it. A brief taster of my idea of a high street utopia. Somewhat different from that proposed by the future High Streets Forum and the BPF, but something that would be about long term, sustainable revitalization, not just a valuation on a balance sheet.

I believe that if the high street is to have a future, in whatever form, we need to be thinking these seemingly impossible thoughts. And if the government and their various advisers are serious about revitalisation they should be encouraging concepts that do more than prop up the property status quo. If anyone else wants to get step outside that box with me, please get in touch.

This blog was originally published as a guest article on the Future High Street Summit blog

When is a U-Turn not a U-Turn? The Parallel Universe of the BRC

Last week’s sudden abandonment by the BRC of calls for a rates freeze came as something of a surprise to most of us, especially those of us who saw a freeze as a compromise anyway.

With business rates increases over the past two years adding over half a billion quid to retailers overheads bills, it didn’t seem too much to ask for government to allow us a bit of breathing space.  Even more so in the face of flatlining high street sales and the erosion of margins by other taxes such as VAT, which have already caused multiple failures this year.

A freeze was never going to be the final solution though.  The growing clamour for a complete revision of local taxation must by now be reaching even the lofty heights of the ivory towers inhabited by the Chancellor and his advisers.  Even so, it seems nothing is to be done to offer a helping hand to retailers.  The closest we’ve come to any direct action on high streets in the last 2 years was planning minister Nick Boles recent proposal that they should effectively be sold off to residential developers and forgotten about.

Now the BRC, an organisation I’d have expected much better of, has not so much blown the idea of a rates freeze out of the water, it’s sent it into orbit!

The reasons for this about-turn, according to Director General Helen Dickinson, is government claims of a potential £1Bn hole in the country’s finances.  This, she says, has led her to see the error of her ways and ally the BRC with the CBI who have been calling for a 2% cap on rates increases, rather than a freeze, for some time now, arguing that this is a more achievable goal in the short term.

Indeed Dickinson came out fighting very soon after the announcement of the BRC’s change of heart, with talk of a ‘step up’ in their campaign over rates reform with a pronouncement that this will be a long term goal.  The obvious disconnect between those two statements didn’t seem to occur to her at the time, or as far as I know, since.

Realistic ideals

Yes it can be argued that in any negotiation there’s little point in holding out for an outcome or a deal that you’re unlikely to be able to achieve.  Asking for the impossible does make you look unreasonable and in some cases faintly ridiculous.  But a freeze was not an unrealistic ideal.  Certainly not if it was applied to retailers only.

The figure of £1Bn loss to the treasury was, it appears, a little over-egged anyway.  The true loss is predicted to be around £840M and that’s only if the freeze was applied across the board to all businesses.  Taking into account rates relief, that figure could be as low as £700M.  But I suppose a figure like £1Billion represents a powerful headline grabbing number, supporting a Treasury polemic that the BRC appears unwilling to challenge.  After all what’s a few hundred million here or there?  Not much it appears, unless you happen to be trying to get the government to reduce the rates burden by a similar amount.

Special Case

In any event, I’d argue that retail is a special case, carrying as it does multiple burdens both in duplication of the charge over multiple locations, and with deference to the amount it contributes in other ways to GDP, not least in terms of employment.  In those circumstances, if the government really wanted to help,  retail could be singled out, thus significantly reducing the overall impact of a freeze.

In fact based on last years increase of £175M, if the reduction was applied to retailers only, it would take something like 5 years before we got close to £1Bn, unless inflation moves drastically northwards.  That’s plenty of time to bring in a new and fairer form of local taxation.

Although I suppose with predictions of next year’s increase running at anything up to £300M it might not take quite so long.  Even a cap at 2% would leave us facing an uplift of around £200M showing just how little would be gained, even if that could be achieved.  Either way the point is an overhaul of the rates system should already be a government priority.  A freeze for a year might sharpen the minds and pencils of those who talk about reform without ever actually doing anything about it, and with potential rates revenue likely to continue declining as many more stores close for good, the need is becoming more urgent every day.

Helen Dickinson herself has acknowledged that :

[a freeze] “wouldn’t be enough to address the significant impact that business rates are having on local jobs, town centres and communities”

Yet somehow she seems to be arguing that a 2% increase would be a better option.  Perhaps that makes sense in some quirky, mathematically challenged, parallel universe, but until the Large Hadron Collider breaks through to a dimension where a 2% increase is better than no increase at all, we may have to file that comment under ‘S’ for Slightly Silly.

Simple ideas like adding ring-fenced increases to VAT or corporation tax might even net a greater income for the exchequer.  But perhaps there’s a hint at what lies behind the BRC’s change of heart.  Would it be outrageously cynical of me to wonder if all those large scale retailers that have the ear of the organisation have just realised that a turnover or profit based taxation system might actually cost them more?  Especially if effective action was taken to reduce tax avoidance schemes at the same time.  Just a thought.

Incredibility

From the comments I’ve received on this move so far it’s done serious damage to the credibility of the BRC, certainly with small businesses.  There’s always been a belief that as a trade body the BRC were rather more concerned with the fortunes of larger retailers, especially supermarkets, than with those of smaller independents.  This wasn’t a view I supported, but this capitulation on one of the most pressing issues on the high street will do nothing to dispel that belief.  The alignment with an institute like the CBI also pretty much puts the lid on any claims that could be made for the BRC being in touch with the grass roots retailers.  That’s all very disappointing, to put it mildly.

Happily though the Federation for Small Businesses does seem to have remained on the side of the little guys and coincidently launched their own campaign for a rates freeze on almost the same day that the BRC backed away from theirs.  I’d urge everyone to sign their petition and get involved with the campaign.

Not a negotiation

And there’s the difference that Helen Dickenson, the BRC and the CBI doesn’t seem to have noticed.  This is a campaign, not a negotiation.  We don’t need to achieve the best result we can by simply asking for what we think we’ll get.  We should be stating a position that is defensible and then fighting for it.  Yes, ridiculous expectations are a waste of energy and resources but we’re not expecting cash handouts to private businesses, jet packs or for Vince Cable to actually bother to research the difficulties that high street retailers face before he makes yet another dismissive speech.

This is a about taking a lobbying stance based on principles and fairness in the same way that campaigners have fought down the years to reform other unfair social inequalities.  Small retailers and their staff depend on the high street for a living.  In many ways reforming the inequities of an unfair taxation system is every bit as important as the fight against sex and race equality, or other socially corrosive political stances.  You can’t negotiate those values and aspirations away just try to save face and score an easy win.  Certainly not if you want to remain relevant to the people you claim to represent.

High street decline – Re-task or re-think?

There’s been much talk  from various quarters about needing to come terms with the idea that the high street is dying.  Bill Grimesy has set this as the starting point in many discussions, and more recently the head of Ocado, Tim Steiner, expounded pretty similar views in a rather unhelpful gush of vitriol to the national press.

The rhetoric characteristically continues along the lines that we’d all better get used to it and deal with the reality.  ‘Dealing with it’ usually involves tacit agreement that shopping malls will be the main destination for consumers of the future and the rest of the slack will be taken up by the direct internet purchases, click and collect and m-commerce.

Ailing high streets, we’re told, will need to re-imagine themselves into areas that will attract people for a variety of reasons rather than just shopping.  Empty retail properties will be re-tasked into other uses, primarily residential.  There’s usually a raft of other ideas that come along in this mix.  Crèches, art galleries, community centres and various other esoteric uses are floated as essential ingredients in a new-age municipal Mecca that will sweep away the tumbleweeds and revitalise areas that people that are staying away from in droves right now.

It’s a view predicated on pragmatism that has some merit.  But I’d ask at what point does pragmatism slip into the realms of defeatism?  I think we’re a long way off from throwing in the towel on the high street, we just need the political will to deal with the underlying problems that have dogged it since investment landlords, property developers and city councillors first crawled out of the primordial slime.

Logical

I don’t argue with the logic of mixed uses in any retail environment, based as it is to a large extent on models already in existence in the shopping centres and mega-malls that are now a ubiquitous part of the UK consumer landscape.  It’s a truism that shoppers don’t just want to shop these days.  They want to drink coffee, browse the internet, have a free makeover or a life-changing experience on a climbing wall.  But with all this already available in the big  retail and recreational cathedrals, one has to wonder why exactly people would return to high streets, even after the proposed transformations are complete.  If all it’s going to take to bring these people back into their local areas is a few new service providers and a community centre, why hasn’t this already been done years ago?

The answer lies in the roots of all the problems currently besetting local high streets.  That of high rents, high rates, poor provision of expensive parking facilities, and the lack of a co-ordinated approach to tenant mix and shared space management.  Yes the same boring old issues I’ve been going on about for years, but they haven’t got any less injurious to retailers fortunes with age.

These shortcomings have already been trumpeted by various commentators and pundits, not to mention being detailed chapter and verse in the Portas Review.  It’s likely that Bill Grimesy will cover some or all of this same ground again when his own report is published in a few weeks.

None of this is news, certainly not to those retailers struggling in such areas, or to the landlords faced with empty properties as a result of previous failures.  The answer is to deal with these issues, not just talk about them.  The answer is not to give up on the high street model and dismantle it by stealth.

Small high streets are incubators for fresh retail ideas driven by entrepreneurs with a good idea and not much capital.  The fall in real terms value of commercial property should be a positive benefit in those circumstances, but by and large this is being undermined by landlords and developers who are desperately holding on, waiting for the boom times to return.

Add to this a government equally addicted to milking the high street cash cow through an iniquitous business rates system, and you don’t need to be an economic whizz kid to see why high street property has become toxic.

Re-model Re-task

By making a case for re-tasking or re-modelling empty shops we simply lay the groundwork for landlords and developers who would love to be able to turn empty shops into ‘luxury flats’ or demolish problem locations altogether and start again.  And who could blame them?

But in doing so we risk losing a valuable resource that we’ll probably never get back.  Stores that right now that could, and should, be let on viable rents to small retailers eager to get a foot on the commercial property ladder.  And I mean on proper long or medium term leases, not the fudgy panacea of the pop-up.

Once these units are gone those opportunities will disappear too.  The large malls aren’t interested in small retailers in the long term, no matter how much they might say they are, and once there’s no other alternative where will independents have left to go?

Yes some small retail units will likely be left in town centres, or included in redevelopments.  But then the reduction in availability will simply serve to support the high aspirations of landlords that have led us down the road we’re currently coming to the end of.  The fact that there are large numbers of empty units being left languishing by landlords and letting agents asking for frankly stupid rents should be seen as a potential resource, not a problem to be erased by sending in yet more deep pocketed developers.

Opportunity knocks

There is an opportunity right now to rescue the situation by forcing landlords back into the real world.  I’ve long advocated imposed rent control and local retail zoning, similar to the systems put in place to deal with down at heel areas in the USA in the 60s, 70s and 80s.  If a property is empty for a certain period of time, local authorities would be able to take over the administration and let the unit on a fair rent.  Landlords would be offered a return on investment at a set level above the current base rate and would of course lose liability for empty business rates.

This would go hand in hand with new planning powers to ensure a sensible tenant mix within given zones, thereby reducing the ‘usual suspect’ nature of small high streets, often populated with the same facades of betting shops, charity shops, coffee bars, mobile phone operators and the like.

I’m all for the free market economy but high street decline is a socio-economic issue that needs to be managed at a local and national government level.  It has knock on effects to the well-being and safety of local citizens and the monetary and social costs associated with those factors.

I’m not averse to seeing retail units turned into other service type uses, but I am very much concerned that once permanent changes are made to retail properties, especially into residential, we’ll see a decline in the small independent sector that will simply strengthen the dominance of  large malls and developments that are far less supportive of those types of operations.

Re-tasking retail into other uses is certainly going to be an interest grabber for politicians and developers keen to make a killing out of empty units in town centres.  But if they also kill off the high street in the process I think they rest of us will all be the poorer for it. As Joni Mitchell once sang, “you don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone”

Internet Purchase Tax ? Be Careful What You Wish For

Sometimes I’m baffled by the workings of the human mind.  For example, why would a retailer in the UK, already burdened with some of the most onerous and inequitable taxes imaginable, not least business rates, actually propose to the government that they introduce a new one, specifically aimed at retail?

Well it seems that’s exactly what Justin King, the Chief executive of Sainsburys has done.  He’s recently called for an internet purchase tax to be applied in the same way he thinks it’s being applied in the USA.  I say ‘he thinks’ because he seems to have misunderstood the reason this tax is being called for over there.

As I’m sure many of you will know, the US don’t have business rates like we have.  They have local purchase tax, which is often added only at the time of purchase.  Items are priced ‘plus taxes’ which are often variable from state to state and region to region.  Because websites can make sales across state and regional lines, many of them have been charging a different rate of tax to what should be paid in the areas where the purchase was made.  In some cases they haven’t charged the tax at all.

Is this right?  No of course it’s not.  But it has pretty much zip to do with the way retailers pay local taxes in the UK.  In the US they are probably quite right to be considering the Marketplace Fairness Act in order to ensure online retail is contributing to local coffers in the way it should.  Here we pay business rates at a flat rate based on the valuation of the property you occupy.  Internet retailers pay these too for distribution warehouses, offices and the like.

What gets up the nose of many retailers, me included to some extent, is that these companies can be based in locations where local rents and by association, local business rates are lower.  Whereas anyone in a high profile high street location would pay a lot more.  That’s because we pay rates based on notional valuations and not as a tax on revenue.  I’ve gone to some lengths to explain how batty I think this system is, but I don’t think introducing a completely new tax is going to make it any more sane.

Golden Goose

Yes it’s annoying and yes it seems unfair, but in essence it’s not.  Online retailers are still paying rates and taxes, but just not at the same level as a normal retailer.  I agree taxes and overhead costs for bricks an mortar retailers are too expensive, but I don’t agree that we should fix that by making online retail just as ridiculously costly.

That’s not levelling the playing field, that’s digging ourselves into a hole in the middle of the penalty box.

Many online retailers are also bricks and mortar operations who already pay a fair share of business rates.  Their online sales may to a large extent be supporting other parts of their business.  Taxing them more isn’t going to improve that situation.  Increased taxation would also have to be passed on to customers, hence neatly strangling the golden goose that may be keeping many parts of the retail industry aloft.

There also seems to be some sort of naïve belief by Justin that ministers will conflate this new tax with business rates and seek to reduce one at the cost of another.  Whereas I don’t have quite the same touching faith in any chancellors spirit of fair play.  Especially not one who’s faced with the biggest book balancing challenge since Margaret Thatcher left charm school.

I’ve been warning about the prospect of an internet purchase tax for the past couple of years.  It’s low hanging fruit that I’m surprised the chancellor hasn’t already started to salivate over.

Governments consistently support the mantra that taxing success should not be the way to go and I largely agree.  Why apply what amounts to a punitive tax on internet based operations rather than reduce the taxation being applied to bricks and mortar?

Yes, retailers in the UK pay far too much tax, well the ones who actually pay tax do,  and certainly far too much in business rates.  But adding to the tax burden elsewhere is not going to solve that problem.  Even if such a tax was sold on the basis of a reduction in business rates across the board, it’ll be a safe bet that pretty soon afterwards that whole relationship will slip into the same grey area that local taxation resides in now.

Leveling The Playing Field?

It’s more likely that an internet purchase tax would be applied in the same way as airport tax, or insurance premium tax.  Just slapped on at a nominal rate which will then be increased gradually in successive budgets.  Pretty soon we’ll just see it as another one life’s certainties, just like any other stealth tax.  We’ll moan but we’ll pay it and maybe a few more businesses will go to the wall.

Moreover any government that introduces such a tax is effectively agreeing with me and many others that applying a flat tax business rate to every other business premises in the country is wrong.  If online retail should pay an overhead tax based on revenue then why not the same for bricks and mortar retailers?

If the conclusion to this debate is a fairer system of local taxation based on ability to pay and it’s applied to ALL retail operations, then I’m all for it.  But I very much doubt there’ll be any change to business rates as they stand now if such a tax were introduced. Maybe I’m just not very trusting of government ministers.  Or maybe I’m less naïve than Justin King.

Either way, let’s stop putting such ideas out there shall we?  After all you have to be careful what you wish for in this life, as sometimes you might just get it.