High Streets and Towns: Regeneration Debate
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Lord Scriven
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High Streets and Towns: Regeneration
Lord Scriven Excerpts(1 day, 8 hours ago)
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Lord Scriven (LD)
My Lords, will the Government look at implementing a commercial landlord levy, which would help small businesses by moving the cost from them on to commercial landlords? It would also have the benefit of ensuring that landlords have an incentive to fill vacant units.
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
We are very keen to make sure that vacant units get filled. We have introduced lots of powers to enable councils to do that, but we also recognise upward rent pressures. Many landlords have upwards-only rent reviews now, so we are bringing in a step in the English devolution Bill to make sure that there are no more upwards-only rent review clauses by which rents can only stay the same or rise. We are legislating to ban those in order to help smaller retailers have more stability in their outgoings.