Nearly one in five Kendal town centre units is empty. On 10 November Cabinet decides whether the council can auction leases on shops left vacant over a year.
Kendal town centre could soon be one of four places in Westmorland and Furness where the council can force long-empty shops back into use. Westmorland and Furness Council’s Cabinet decides on Tuesday 10 November whether to approve High Street Rental Auctions in four towns: Kendal, Barrow, Penrith and Ulverston.
The power lets a council auction a lease on a commercial unit that has stood empty for more than a year, where the landlord has not taken reasonable steps to let it. The lease binds the owner, not the council.
The council’s own shop count puts Kendal’s vacancy rate at 18.1% in 2026, the highest of the five years of figures in the report. Only Barrow is worse among the four pilot towns. (Cabinet report, 10 November 2026)
How many Kendal shops are empty
The council counts units on 27 high streets every year. Kendal’s figures, from the consultation report going to Cabinet:
| Year | Kendal units empty |
|---|---|
| 2022 | 14.8% |
| 2023 | 17.8% |
| 2024 | 16.4% |
| 2025 | 17.4% |
| 2026 | 18.1% |
That is close to one unit in five. The report puts the national average at 13.5%, about one in seven, citing government guidance.
The other pilot towns stand at 25.1% in Barrow (excluding The Mall), 15.1% in Ulverston and 13.1% in Penrith.
The rest of the south Lakes
Kendal is not the only centre with a problem. Several smaller places nearby have seen sharp rises this year:
- Bowness: 16.2%, up from 7.2% in 2025
- Sedbergh: 16.3%, up from 5.6%
- Milnthorpe: 16.0%, up from 10.0%
- Coniston: 20.0%, the highest in the south Lakes, on a small number of units
Others are doing far better. Windermere stands at 7.4%, Kirkby Lonsdale at 6.9%, Grasmere at 5.0% and Arnside at 4.2%. Cartmel had no empty units at all.
None of those smaller centres is in the pilot. The report says rolling the powers out more widely now is “not considered a viable option” because of pressure on staff. It asks Cabinet to let officers add new areas later, after a fresh 28-day consultation.
Which Kendal streets are covered
The starting boundary was the primary shopping area in the South Lakeland Local Plan. After the consultation, the council widened it to take in more of:
- Highgate, south towards Kirkland
- Kirkland, around the parish church end of town
- Stramongate, including Saltaire House and Stramongate House
The council counted 99 properties on those added stretches, 16 of them empty, in June 2026.
Finkle Street was already inside the boundary and stays in. The Westmorland Shopping Centre is included too: kiosks 1 and 2 and units 1 to 15a.
K Village is left out. Its empty units were suggested in the consultation, but the council says it will “work directly with the landlord and commercial agent to understand barriers and opportunities” instead. It will look again if the units stay empty. The maps are in appendix 2 of the Cabinet papers.
What people said
The consultation ran from 16 February to 7 April 2026 and drew 185 responses. Kendal came up more than anywhere else:
- 47 respondents named Kendal as a high street with a lot of empty units, against 30 for Barrow and 28 for Penrith.
- 83 said Kendal was a high street they used, the most of any town.
- 71.9% agreed with the four towns chosen.
- Kendal town centre and Finkle Street were the two places most often named as needing the scheme.
Respondents also blamed business rates, parking costs and the condition of buildings for empty shops, the report says.
How an auction would work
The rules come from the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023 and have been in force since December 2024. A unit qualifies if it has been empty for more than a year, or for at least 366 days in the past two years.
The steps the council would follow:
- Officers keep a vacancy register for each designated area.
- The council serves an initial letting notice on the owner, then a final letting notice. Owners can make representations and appeal.
- If the unit is still empty, the council runs an auction for a lease, usually of one to five years.
- The winning bidder gets a lease for a use that helps the high street: a shop, cafe, office, community use, leisure or a service.
The report stresses the auction is “a backstop” after talks with the landlord fail. It says early adopter councils got more than 60 units reoccupied without ever reaching an auction. A designation is also entered as a local land charge, so anyone buying a property inside the boundary is told about it.
What it costs
The report says the pilot should mean no extra spending this financial year, with officer time met from existing budgets. Surveys, marketing, legal notices and the auctions themselves will cost money later, but the report says the “scale and timing of any expenditure remains uncertain”.
The government announced £10 million over two years in June 2026 to help councils run these auctions. The report says the council’s share has not been confirmed, so “no reliance can currently be placed” on it.
What it means for you
- If you own an empty unit in the town centre, expect the council to get in touch. It must check every property against the legal tests before it serves a notice, and you have the right to make representations and appeal.
- If you want premises for a shop, cafe or service, auctioned leases of one to five years could become a way into Kendal’s centre without a long commitment. No auction dates exist yet.
- If you just shop in town, nothing changes straight away. The process takes months for each property, and the council’s first job is building the vacancy register.
Cabinet meets at 10am on Tuesday 10 November. The papers and agenda are on the council’s meeting page. We will report the decision. For other changes in the town centre, see our Kendal planning news and our guide to parking in Kendal.
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