And your winner is Preston

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-32058929

Middlesbrough – not even the best at being the worst.

🙁

I am not sure health scores displayed in food business windows will work. People already know that kebabs and burgers are not healthy but dont care. healthy takeaways would not last 2 minutes in most towns.

The thing is that there is now a disconnect between what shop landlords want to charge as rental to businesses, and the reality of what businesses can afford. There’s a couple of empty properties on our surprisingly healthy high street. Mrs Binners enquired about what they wanted as rent. The answer she got sounded like some kind of joke. We couldn’t believe they were serious. Its was absolutely exorbitant!!! You’d have to clear 3 grand a month just to cover the rent. 😯 This isn’t a city centre. Its a row of shops in a small town

So its been sat empty for about 6 months now. And will continue to do so, I’d imagine. The landlords will not enter into any negotiations about price apparently. They’d rather it sat empty. Add to this business rates that were set at the eight of the boom, and which are now frankly ridiculous, you’ve no chance of making most businesses work!

Its absolutely bonkers!

But fleecing gullible people with tips on horses, and high stakes gambling machines is a very, very lucrative business indeed. As is selling unhealthy stuff to fatties with staff on minimum wage

Woohoo Huddersfield is only no.8 on the unhealthy list, i opened the article expecting at least a top 5 if not a podium finish

So its been sat empty for about 6 months now. And will continue too. The landlords will not enter into any negotiations about price apparently. They’d rather it sat empty. Add to this business rates that were set at the eight of the boom, and which are now frankly ridiculous, you’ve no chance!

Most probably linked to the loans/mortgages outstanding on them – if you rent them at a lower rate it’ll call into question their ‘value’.

I am not sure health scores displayed in food business windows will work. People already know that kebabs and burgers are not healthy but dont care. healthy takeaways would not last 2 minutes in most towns

I dissagree.

If you have a Subway (or Pret, etc) & a McDonalds next door to each other you would think that the Subway is the healthy option, but it’s probably almost as bad. If there was a lable then they’d probably work very hard to make their offering healthy otherwise it removes the reason for going there instead of Mcdonalds.

It’s an odd dedinition of healthy though, an independant* cafe serving Latte and Cake is less healthy than Mcdonalds surely? What they’ve really done is conduct a survey of who’s got the most middle class high street.

*it is better for the economy though, independant shops typicaly put a lot more moneny in to the local economy than chain’s which suck money out to the head offices/share holders.

it is better for the economy though, independant shops typicaly put a lot more moneny in to the local economy than chain’s which suck money out to the head offices/share holders.

and funnelled through international sister companies for tax reasons. Presumably independents aren’t anywhere near as good at tax avoidance.

Even if the independents are as good at tax avoidance they are more likely to spend their dirty money locally.

Sauce here:

http://www.businessnewsdaily.com/1298-small-business-good-for-economy.html

That wasn’t where I first read it, so it’s probably on the BBC too somewhere, and actualy had a factor of how much better local businesses were. It was surprisingly big, where most people are aware that businesses have a multiplier effect on the local economy, big businesses like supermarkets or chain restaurants actualy had a dividing effect as they made more profit from local people paying them than they paid out in wages and local services.

its been sat empty for about 6 months now. And will continue too. The landlords will not enter into any negotiations about price apparently. They’d rather it sat empty. Add to this business rates that were set at the eight of the boom, and which are now frankly ridiculous, you’ve no chance!

Most probably linked to the loans/mortgages outstanding on them – if you rent them at a lower rate it’ll call into question their ‘value’.

Possibly but also… Imagine you have 10 properties to rent – all the same size and type and all in similar locations. 9 are rented and one is empty and has been for a while. You can’t make the empty one cheaper just because its empty. If you did you wouldn’t get a 10th tenant, one of the 9 you already have would just move to the cheaper one. Then you’ve still got one empty premises and now ones rented out at a discount as well. If you cut the price of that empty one another tenant will move and so on and so on until you’ve discounted them all and still probably have one empty.

big businesses like supermarkets or chain restaurants actualy had a dividing effect as they made more profit from local people paying them than they paid out in wages and local services.

its also the point that regardless of what you pay in wages the profits still all leave town. The owner/directors/shareholders and so on aren’t living, spending and reinvesting locally.

My home town in at number 5. I’m weeping into my Greggs pasty now.