June 2025
After setting up the Vacant Shops Academy to help places tackle voids, especially those with no agent boards visible, Iain Nicholson is on a mission to equip all he can with his four steps for creating a successful high street.
Around 40% of visible vacant high street units in the UK today have no agents involved. That is the result of a snap survey of the Vacant Shops Academy locations, where lack of names or details is a block to potential renters, making the void situation more difficult in some areas.
The figure seems shocking given a 2024 government consultation cited 172,000 empty units in the country last year, with 80% unlet for more than two years. But the Academy’s three-year-old research is not the typical mainstream media headline screaming “death of the high street”.
In fact, the opposite.
Iain Nicholson, the Academy’s founder, says there are little talked about reasons for the number, compiled from several places and tested each time they take on a new location.
"People see landlords as ‘absentee’, ‘greedy’ or ‘not interested’ when in many cases, they have other things happening that means a letting doesn’t suit their circumstances. While frustrating for the place, these decisions can be totally sensible from a landlord perspective.”
Reasons include having other aspirations such as redevelopment for the site, occupiers on the upper floors covering target income for the building or having a previous tenant paying a much higher rent than they could now get, and complex financial arrangements with the bank that make a letting problematic.
“In other cases, the costs of doing work to the space to get it back into use are significant,” says Iain: “This is an issue with former department stores, ex- large brand stores, and banks. The layout or frontage of some of these big buildings are not suitable for the current market.”
The upshot is voids remain a concern for many towns and cities, and Iain recognises the market is “challenging”. In a LinkedIn post in February Iain listed over 150 new stores to be opened in the UK in 2025, including 25 from GCW-client Superdrug / Savers, and showed his frustration with what he calls a “gloomster” mainstream media narrative, that he dubbed “a parallel universe.”
“Yes, the high street is challenging. But there is so much good happening, so much hard work. There are new brands, retail and hospitality and services, opening and progress on what I call the alternative or the additional use list.
But the story is not breaking through, for various reasons, in the national media, says Iain: “They seem fixated on the death of the high street and running stories that chime with this, and are being helped along by analysts and commentators thinking the only way to get coverage is to be on that agenda.”
As a result, in 2022 he set up the Academy, a consultancy, to support locations in reducing empty unit numbers – not just those with no boards.
At the heart of the Academy approach is bringing together anyone that can help get tenants: landlords, agents, businesses, communities, cultural organisations, councils, chambers, a BID where there is one – getting commissions from the latter two, and by using the four-stages of “audit, engage, encourage, promote.”
This is to audit existing vacant space, those that might soon become empty and assess any business type gaps in the town or city centre mix, and to identify what would be beneficial additions. Engage is to build and maintain strong relationships with agents and landlords as well as existing traders leading to a clearer picture of the history and barriers to letting, and to get updates on changes.
Encourage, is the lettings process both through agents and landlords, and would-be occupiers, especially those on target lists. It includes meanwhile use and helping establish a role as a go-to for those looking to establish a presence on the high street.
Promote is just that, using social, and traditional media to share positive updates on progress with residents, the property sector, existing businesses and would-be occupiers.
The goal is not just to fill the space, but improve the mix of business types, and tackle the negative impact on the look and perception brought about by empty shops.
It is all wrapped up in what Iain calls ‘place partnerships’, sweeping away the notion that vacancy is just a landlord/ agent’s thing.
And the tactic is clearly working. At the end of last year, the Academy had reached 36 different locations, from Aberdeen to Poole, Tredegar to Grimsby.
The four-stage theory began to emerge in 2013 when Iain was part of the Portas Pilot scheme – launched the previous year and run by retail expert, Mary Portas. At the time, he was involved in a team that had funding and time allocated to work in Wantage, a small Oxfordshire market town with 23 vacant shops out of around 170.
Using the place partnership method and a range of measures including launching a pop-up shop project and community hub, that Iain calls “one of the very early initiatives of its kind”, void numbers dropped from 23 to 3 in 18 months.
“Over time I started to think… I’d come across a way to tackling vacancy that would work wherever it was an issue,” he says.
During the next few years Iain worked with local teams in numerous locations: “I got so confident that I thought there’s got to be a quicker way of getting this to more places. And that was doing it through the Vacant Shops Academy.
“The ethos is to embed those skills with local teams - helping them understand the method, running it with them and then deliver the projects and initiatives it suggests as ‘next steps’, once the vacancy picture is clear. The outcome is we’ve been able to move much faster.”
Working with agents, both those with unlet space in their portfolio and those commissioned to find locations for brands they represent, while encouraging the on the ground place partnerships, is crucial.
Iain highlights GCW as an example of a company taking on board the important wider view of places and the agents’ role, highlighted in their significant work in Henley. GCW is leasing space on Market Place, and within Gardiner Place, with recent lettings to Cook, Piccolino and a boutique hotel operator.
“It’s an important part of this story,” says Iain, adding: “Having agents surpassing the traditional” ‘we’re going to let units for the landlord or find units for our occupier list’, to being involved in this bigger conversation with landlords and what role can the council, the BID play and how can we get the community and existing businesses involved, is crucial to what we do.
“They can also play a valuable role by marketing those visibly vacant properties with no agent boards.”
Retail, hospitality and services still typically make up most candidates for vacant units, but Iain says in places where there are more voids or those not targeted by national brands, then arts and crafts, creative, culture, community, history and heritage, leisure, education, and health & well- being are other potential go-to uses.
The big plus side is that areas become more vibrant, and resilient because you’ve got a range of uses and you’re less prone to retail or hospitality downturns.”
For Iain, the success rate of the Academy is measured by how many place partnerships have been created, with all parties working together on tackling vacancy.
He says: “That’s the primary objective, for the Academy, to get more places with that approach because I believe then they’ll see their vacancy being reduced and importantly, the mix of uses strengthen, and that will spin off as a downward move in the too-long-stuck national vacancy rate.”