High Street Rental Auction

Overview

North Northamptonshire Council was confirmed as one of 11 ‘Early Adopters’ of the High Street Rentals Auction Programme (HSRA) announced by the Government in December last year, which will result in landlords renting out long-term empty shops to new tenants.

Aim

HSRA is a new power for local authorities and aims to reduce long-term vacancies by bringing back into use vacant properties in our local high streets. We will work with landlords to regenerate high streets across North Northamptonshire by taking part in this pilot scheme, designed to reduce the number of empty retail units.

HSRA requires landlords to rent out persistently vacant commercial properties to new tenants such as local businesses or community groups which is intended to increase footfall and improve the high street economy.

Benefits

Areas with high levels of empty shops can see higher unemployment rates, boarded up shops, vandalism, and a lack of pride from residents in their local high streets. This new initiative will allow the council to work with landlords to bring buildings back to life, reducing the number of vacant premises.

Under the powers, councils can auction leases for commercial properties which have stood empty for more than 12 months within a two-year period. Councils can also restrict the type of businesses which can bid for a lease to ensure HSRA zones have a diverse range of shops and businesses.

Getting the property occupied for suitable high-street use will be beneficial to our area, it supports our local economy and improves the look and feel of our high streets.

Landlords

The council will work closely with landlords to help them rent their property without needing to start the HSRA process if possible and work proactively with landlords to encourage vibrant and successful high streets. HSRA enables the Council to assign a lease on behalf of the landlord only if no action has been taken. The landlord remains the legal owner of the property.

How does it work?

In brief:

Step 1: Council identifies a persistently vacant property.

Step 2: Council serves notice to the landlord to let the property.

Step 3: If not let within 8 weeks, the Council can run an auction to assign a lease.

Step 4: A 12-week auction process begins. The full process takes up to 6 months.

For full guidance, please visit the Government's HSRA Guidance page.

Have your say

An engagement exercise has been launched, to understand the views of the public and interested parties on proposals to designate Town Centres in Corby, Kettering, Rushden, and Wellingborough as areas where a High Street Rental Auction can be used. We want to hear the views of residents, community groups, businesses, and others with an interest in the area.  It will run between 13 October until 9 November 2025.

Once the engagement closes, we will collate all responses in a report which will be included in an Executive Report at a later date.

Further investigations will then be carried out to determine which area of four town centres: Corby, Kettering, Wellingborough, or Rushden are eligible for the High Street Rental Auction following central Government guidelines, and further consultation will be conducted.

How to have your say

You can tell us your views in one of the following ways:

Complete the short online survey using the link at the end of this page

Email us at: High.Street.Rental@northnorthants.gov.uk

Write to us at: High Street Rental Auction engagement, North Northamptonshire Council, Corby Cube, George Street, Corby, NN17 1QG

Specifying whether the proposal is supported (or not) and include the reasons why.

This survey closes at 23.59 on 9 November 2025.

For information about how consultation and engagement responses are managed, please see the consultation and engagement privacy notice.