Aberdeen's High Street Gamble: Can Hands-On Revival Save Britain's Town Centres?

The boarded-up Marks & Spencer on Aberdeen's Union Street announces itself the moment you step off the train. The storefront is a ghost—the lettering worn away, windows blackened, doors sealed shut. It sits at the top of what locals call the Granite Mile, a stretch of silver-grey Victorian stone that once pulled shoppers from across the northeast of Scotland. The street was where you went to try on the latest fashions, to spend an afternoon, to feel the pulse of a city. Now it is pocked with empty shops, and residents like Marie Sim, who has lived here her whole life, come to Union Street only to catch a bus somewhere else.

This decline is not unique to Aberdeen. High streets across Britain have been hollowed out first by out-of-town shopping centres and then by the relentless shift to online retail. But Aberdeen is fighting back with an unusually coordinated approach. The city has essentially declared war on its vacant units, taking a hands-on role in tracking down absent landlords, offering business incentives, and bringing neglected upper floors back into use. The council is pouring tens of millions into the effort—a £40 million indoor food and drink market, funded through the Levelling Up Fund, sits at the centre of a broader push to make the city centre a destination again, not just a place to shop.

The scale of the problem is staggering. One in eight commercial properties on British high streets are currently vacant, a figure that has remained stubbornly high for years. The barriers are structural and stubborn. Buildings are often owned by dozens of different landlords, sometimes through offshore companies or complex ownership structures, each with their own interests. Many units are old and need expensive modernisation. The cost of running a business has risen—employment costs are higher, business rates are a burden, and footfall has been in long-term decline for years. A survey by retail body Revo and real estate consultancy Lambert Smith Hampton found that two-thirds of town centre experts believe there is still 20 to 40 percent too much retail space in Britain's town centres. As one former government adviser on urban regeneration put it, if there was a simple solution, it would have been deployed years ago.

Aberdeen's response began after the city hit rock bottom by the end of 2022. A community-led group called Our Union Street formed after an emergency summit, led by Bob Keiller, a former FTSE 100 CEO working without pay. The group listened to thousands of resident submissions and decided to focus on restoring civic pride and filling empty units. It was a co-ordinated effort involving letting agents, the council, landlords, businesses, and volunteers. Keiller keeps a map on his office wall with colour-coded Post-it notes tracking the status of every property. The team audited the street, tracked down absent landlords, and logged what was empty and why. Volunteers cleaned and painted empty properties to make them more attractive to potential tenants. They also spruced up the streets themselves, picking litter, weeding, and painting bins—work that continues once a fortnight. A website collates all available properties and lists financial incentives: council fit-out grants for new businesses and two-year discounts on business rates.

The results have been tangible. In 2023, 57 of 198 units on Union Street were empty. As of now, 33 have been filled, with another 14 in the process of being let. But it is not a linear recovery. Since the initiative started, another 20 units have become vacant. Keiller insists the key metric is that they are filling faster than emptying. His operations director describes the work as putting an arm round the shoulder of those they can help and being a wasp in the ear of those who simply say no. The team produces social media content linking residents and visitors to a new app showcasing what the city offers. For Keiller, small wins—tackling graffiti, painting over vandalism repeatedly until offenders lose interest—are essential to changing public perception. The psychology matters: if people see that defacement will be painted over, they eventually stop trying.

Aberdeen also brought in Iain Nicholson, a high street troubleshooter who has worked with dozens of towns through his Vacant Shops Academy. Out of more than 1,000 empty units he has audited nationally, more than half on average did not have a letting agent actively marketing the property. Some councils do not even know who the landlords are. Nicholson argues that empty shops will not all be filled by market forces alone. Towns need to encourage a broader range of occupiers—arts and culture, leisure, health and well-being—not just retail. What strikes him about Aberdeen is its joined-up approach and the willingness of people to roll up their sleeves and overcome differences. That, he says, is not yet something you can say about everywhere.

But filling empty units is only part of the challenge. The bigger question is what town centres are actually for. Changing habits mean fewer shops will be needed. Instead, experts argue, town centres need more people living and working in them, with new homes and office space alongside services that cannot be done online. In Aberdeen, the old BHS building—a department store that closed in 2016—is being converted into an entrance plaza for the new food and drink market. The physical appearance of Union Street is changing too. Parts of the pavements are being widened to make the street more pleasant to spend time in, though many residents are weary of the disruption and new traffic restrictions. A local property developer, Robert Keane, bought the Trinity shopping centre in 2023 and is preparing to re-occupy it with a national leisure brand. He is also replacing a notoriously tiring stairway from the train station with an escalator. He believes he can make it work by cutting parking costs, resetting rents, and being more nimble than previous distant owners. He is betting that the dynamics of Aberdeen are finally changing and reckons the city should look and feel different by 2027.

Yet the obstacles remain formidable. Money is a big barrier. Regeneration schemes often struggle because redevelopment costs outweigh likely financial returns, making public sector support essential. Higher interest rates and rising construction costs are making the economics more challenging. Bigger projects take years. Some immediate solutions being called for include making it easier and cheaper to open and run a high street business, with business rates a particular concern. The chief executive of Next argues that planning reform is more important than rates relief. Meanwhile, English councils are being given new powers to force empty commercial units vacant for at least a year to be offered to tenants through a High Street Rental Auction, even if the landlord objects. Early results are promising—Bassetlaw Council in Nottinghamshire reports that more than 30 shops have been let or are under offer as a result of the policy. Lauren Reid and her mother Rose moved their fashion boutique to Union Street in 2024, using a council grant to help with refurbishment. Can they make the sums add up? She says they are getting there, and she feels the same about the future of her street. Rome, she notes, was not built in a day. Walking along Union Street today, past the boarded-up shopfronts and roadworks, the city still feels caught between its past and whatever comes next.