Bedford Borough councillors have raised questions over how the council defines “vacancy”, after the former Debenhams building was excluded from the official count of empty units.
This week’s Budget and Corporate Services Overview and Scrutiny Committee (Thursday, 4 December) was told that only three of the council’s 76 town centre retail units are vacant.
However, several councillors said this figure did not reflect the public’s experience of the large, empty Debenhams premises in the High Street.
Read: Open letter: Mayor Wootton, make Debenhams a legacy Bedford can be proud of
Cllr Sue Oliver (Labour, Kempston North) said the way the vacancy was being presented risked confusing residents.
The report presented to the Committee said the former Debenhams building “is part of the Mayes Yard regeneration procurement and therefore can be excluded from the vacant list”.
“It’s a bit like one of those Christmas cracker conundrums, isn’t it?” cllr Oliver said.
“When is a vacant property not a vacant property – when it’s Debenhams.” She said if any number of residents were asked to name an empty property, “a lot of them” would point to Debenhams.
“We need to be careful with our wording… because if I said, ‘I’ve seen a report that says [Debenhams] is not vacant – they’d laugh at me.”
“Wise buy”
Read: Failed lease of former pub leads to hefty bill for Bedford Borough taxpayers
Cllr Zara Layne (Labour, Harpur) also questioned why the building, which was not generating income and costing around £450,000 a year to keep secure, could be excluded from the vacancy list.
Ed Palmieri, head of regeneration, property and local economy, said the council did not treat Debenhams as a “void” because it sits within a wider regeneration programme and would be prohibitively expensive to bring back into short-term use.
He said: “The important thing is this asset does have a purpose, there is a plan for it, and that is the regeneration project.”
Read: Mayor rejects calls to sell former Debenhams building costing taxpayers £450,000 each year
When asked more broadly about the council’s strategy in acquiring such properties, mayor Tom Wootton said “nobody was backing” the town centre and the council “should be the ones leading from the front”.
“Because if we don’t back our town centre, who will?” he asked. “The property being empty right in the middle [of the town] was an eyesore, and we were determined to try and do something about it.
“I think in the next month or two we’ll be able to announce what we plan to do. I think in 20- 30 years’ time people will look at this and say what a wise buy it was,” he said.
By John Guinn
Local Democracy Reporter
