High street gloom as Britain shuts up shop

[lilelvis2000]

we have quite a thriving high street where I live but it is a small ish market town with a relatively affluent populous.

however some shops which have gone down the pan were just ridiculously expensive.

For example there was a sandwich shop which would charge approx £5 for a ham sandwich - so to feed a family of 4 costs about £20 - just to expensive and has now gone down the pan.

I suspect their largest monthy bill was their rates bill. I'd hate to see what Gregg's rates bill is like. Ouch!

In my wifes building the rates are assessed at £11,000 per year. So a small business pays £5,500 just be be in a building. The max the landlord got offered for the building was £5000pa in rent. Its no wonder businesses are falling over.

[original PM]

I suspect their largest monthy bill was their rates bill. I'd hate to see what Gregg's rates bill is like. Ouch!

In my wifes building the rates are assessed at £11,000 per year. So a small business pays £5,500 just be be in a building. The max the landlord got offered for the building was £5000pa in rent. Its no wonder businesses are falling over.

Agree with this and as more and more business close landlords will raise the rent on others to keep the revenue flowing in.

[Runs With Scissors]

I think the defend their workers with a lot more oomph. The care about looking out for each other.

I read that as Oompah, which I think is a fabulous way of defending the German workers. We should defend our Scottish workers with a Pipe Band, our Welsh workers with a Male Voice Choir, our Norn Irish workers with an Orange Walk/Hibernians Flute/Accordion Band and our English workers with whatever the stereotypical English native music is these days. Is there such a thing as a Morris band?

[SueEllen]

Agree with this and as more and more business close landlords will raise the rent on others to keep the revenue flowing in.

When some large chains went bust where I live, it was revealed how stupidly high the rents were i.e. £500,000 per year for the largest shop. The landlords didn't raise the rent but the rents were so high the only stores that could afford to move in (and eventually did) where other chains. However in the largest retail spaces the shop whether it sells clothes or stationary manages to have a coffee shop.

The smaller independent businesses tend to be in buildings with offices or flats on top.

[SantaClaus]

Around my neck of the woods in North London, the council have completely stitched up parking, even on a Sunday. It's no wonder half the independent shops have closed down.

Greed before common sense it seems.

[Platypus]

I'm just looking on right move for high street properties to let in my town. The rents being asked are astronomical (IMO) plus rates of course. It's enough to put anybody off... rent + rates + heat/light around £2k per month then you have staff wages, shop fitting and stock before you even open the doors

[cailin maith]

There is a tiny coffee/sandwich shop, not a chain, in the Barton Arcade in central Manchester near where I work. I know the owner. Her business rates are £485 per week. Per week!!! She's been there for a number of years but really struggling these last 3 or so years. I can't remember what she said the rent was but it's pretty astronomical. The landlord won't let her out of the lease early without a massive penalty and most months she has to put money in just to keep afloat.

Bonkers.

[xoggoth]

I suspect their largest monthly bill was their rates bill

Good point. What with this and the high parking charges in some towns, local authorities are not exactly helping the situation.

[mudskipper]

plus high street shops have to pay ruinous levels of commercial council tax, a good ten or twenty times the domestic rates I believe.

It can't be long before the Govmint has the bright idea of an online purchase delivery tax to level the playing field (with shop purchases of in-stock goods exempt).

But then you would start seeing "shops" that were little more than Internet cafes in which assistants simply ordered goods online on the purchaser's behalf for later purchase and delivery.

Sounds like Argos.

[lilelvis2000]

Agree with this and as more and more business close landlords will raise the rent on others to keep the revenue flowing in.

I doubt that. its more likely landlords will get desperate to get anyone in. Because after six months they face the 'empty rates' bill which is huge.

So in times when its nigh on impossible to get businesses to take offices - landlords get hit because they can't get someone in. I suspect that most landlords will fake up a business and put it in there just to avoid these 'empty rates'. Its no wonder that many landlords are converting office space to residential - better rents and less worries about rates.

I think there was a recent study done whereby Britain was deemed to have the craziest and most expensive property taxes on business premises. And yet little comment on this from the "business friendly and hard-working small business owner" govt.

If I sound pissed its because I am both a business owner and a landlord.