High street REITs could be the key to reviving Britain’s ailing town centres, according to a groundbreaking report.
The Town Centre Investment Zones report, to be released next week, is based on research by Peter Brett Associates, Bond Dickinson and Citi Centric and part-funded by the three pilot areas and the Department for Communities and Local Government. It found that fragmented ownership was the biggest barrier to drawing people back to high streets.
The report suggests that pooling assets into an investment entity – which could be in the form of a REIT – would create an income-producing vehicle that would attract fresh funds back into town centres. That vehicle could hire experts to devise coherent asset management strategies.
This town centre investment management would help high streets adapt to changes in consumer behaviour, the report claims.
It follows the 2011 Portas Review into Britain’s high streets, which focused on facilities management. It seeks to move forward the debate on how to tackle town centres’ structural issues.
Other recommendations include re-introducing more housing to town centres to help tackle the country’s supply problems and bring more people back into “inhospitable ghost towns”.
The report also recommends that the government provide financial support for examining how funding prototypes for the pilots might work, and says that TCIM should be endorsed and promoted by DCLG as a solution to address underperforming town centres.
Former British Property Federation chief executive Liz Peace, who chaired the report’s steering group, said: “This new and more fundamental approach, using proper asset management techniques, offers us the best, and maybe the only, hope of making lasting and beneficial change.”
