Home workers moving into empty sites could be good business all round

Scotland's army of home-workers are being deterred from moving into commercial premises by a lack of affordable options.

A survey by the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) found that 42 per cent of home-based entrepreneurs cited cost as the key reason for not expanding into dedicated premises, while a further 6 per cent said there was no suitable space available.

The FSB said Scotland's "hidden army of back-room businesses" could help revitalise the country's town centres if local authorities could provide suitable and affordable business space for them.

Andy Willox, the FSB's Scottish policy convenor, said vacant retail units could be adapted for other kinds of small business, bringing them into the heart of towns where they could network and trade with each other.

"There are no quick fixes to turn around our town centres," he said. "A variety of solutions need to be developed and adapted to individual towns' circumstances.

"However, what we do know is that there is an increasing number of vacant retail units. Further, almost half of the home-based business owners we asked cited cost or suitability as reasons for basing their business at home. Therefore, there must be a way to diversify the use of these empty units - providing modern businesses with suitable premises - putting business back into the hearts of our towns."

The FSB argues that the residents of these new units would use existing town centre shops, could collaborate for contracts and pool their buying power to negotiate better rates on services such as next generation broadband.

It said that a wide variety of premises were needed, not just office space. But it said some local authority planning strategies could prevent retail units from being converted for alternatives uses, hindering town centre diversification.

Ian Davison Porter, director of Bids Scotland, an organisation dedicated to encouraging "business improvement districts" to aid the regeneration of towns and villages, said some schemes already existed to help small businesses locate in towns, but it was difficult to persuade landlords to lower their prices. He said that even when premises were lying vacant, commercial landlords were often reluctant to lower their rents as that would affect their negotiations on other properties, or adversely affect the value for mortgage purposes of their property.

Davison Porter said local authorities, landlords and estate agents would have to work together to tackle the problem of vacant properties, providing a central source of information that would help small business to find suitable premises.

"In our smaller towns, it's highly unlikely that a national company is going to move in," he said."That's why we need to work with small businesses and start-ups and get them into the town centres."