Half of Melton Mowbray’s Empty Shops Have No Agent — and It’s Getting Worse

Fears are growing over the state of Melton Mowbray town centre after it emerged that approximately 35 commercial properties are currently vacant — and nearly half of them, 16 buildings, have no known agent working to let or sell them. Some are falling into disrepair. One has been repeatedly broken into. And the man responsible for keeping the town centre commercially healthy says landlords need to do better.

The concerns, reported by the Melton Times this week, shine a light on a problem that is far from new but appears to be worsening. Vacant shops account for around 10.6% of available properties in the Melton BID area — slightly below the national average of 14.6% recorded in Q2 2025, but high enough to cause real damage to the town’s street scene and trading confidence. If the pattern of local government reorganisation across Leicestershire strips the borough council of resources and focus in the coming years, tackling this problem will only get harder.

The Buildings Causing Most Concern in Melton Mowbray

The properties attracting the most attention are large, prominent, and in some cases historic. The former Tuxford and Tebbutt dairy at Thorpe End is perhaps the most striking example. The creamery — which produced Stilton cheese on that site from 1780 until its closure in 2024, when owner Arla Foods shut the operation after a strategic review — now sits silent on the edge of the town centre. It is a substantial industrial site of over 5,000 sq m, listed by agents Nabarro McAllister with a price tag of £1.75 million. No buyer has been announced.

On Nottingham Street, The Mall — a covered shopping arcade of ten individual retail units built in 1970 — has been vacant and available to let for months. Neighbouring traders are understood to be seriously worried: the rear doors have been broken into on multiple occasions, and there are concerns about the risk of deliberate fires being started inside the building. Police have confirmed they are aware of vandalism at the premises and are investigating.

Colles Hall on Burton Street, which was most recently occupied by the Crafty Slice restaurant, is also sitting empty with no agent. The former Barclays Bank on Wilton Road, the old NatWest and TSB branches on High Street, and the former B&H Midland Services building on Norman Way complete a list of once-active commercial premises now standing idle with no clear route back to occupation.

Perhaps most poignant of all: the former offices of the Melton Times itself, on a prominent site in the town centre, have been vacant for around eight years since the newspaper’s lease expired. Windows at the rear have been smashed.

Melton BID: Landlords Have a Duty to Act

James Colclough, manager of Melton BID, has been frank about what the figures mean. Speaking to the Melton Times, he said: “Melton BID regularly monitors the vacant unit situation in Melton Mowbray, and tries to connect landlords, agents, and prospective new businesses together for the prosperity of the town. Unfortunately, nearly half of all vacant units have no agent working to let or sell them and a number are falling into disrepair. This reflects poorly on the visual appeal of Melton Mowbray and needs to be tackled. We believe landlords have a duty to the business community to be actively maintaining and promoting their building towards a positive use case.”

It is worth noting that Melton BID and Melton Borough Council have not been idle. In March 2025, the council allocated £140,000 from the UK Shared Prosperity Fund across three separate town centre improvement projects — including £20,000 specifically to Melton BID to support programmes aimed at bringing vacant properties back into use. Projects funded include removal of old signage, better promotion tools for new start-up businesses, and support for pop-up ventures in empty units.

The BID has also previously decorated vacant shopfronts and run pop-up trails to reduce the visual blight of empty windows. These are creditable efforts. But they are by their nature cosmetic — you cannot dress a vacant window into a functioning business.

What Powers Does the Council Actually Have?

The question residents and traders are entitled to ask is: what can Melton Borough Council actually do about landlords who sit on empty, deteriorating properties and do nothing?

The answer is more than many people realise, though the political will to use those powers is another matter. Under the Levelling Up and Regeneration Act 2023, local authorities in England gained new Compulsory Rental Auction (CRA) powers — allowing councils to force landlords to let commercial properties that have been vacant for more than one year in a high street or town centre area. The council can put the lease to competitive tender, with small businesses and community groups eligible to bid. Durham County Council became one of the first to deploy these powers in 2025.

Beyond CRA, councils have longer-standing tools available: compulsory purchase orders, enforced sale procedures where debts have accrued against a property, and the ability to require landlords to secure and maintain buildings that pose a safety risk. A broken rear door and smashed windows at The Mall arguably already cross the threshold for intervention on public safety grounds.

Melton Borough Council has been asked for comment on the vacant property situation by the Melton Times and had not responded at the time of publication. That silence is itself telling.

Our Take: The Clock Is Ticking on Melton’s Town Centre

Let’s be direct about this. Melton Mowbray is a genuinely special town — it has a working market, a strong food heritage, good independent traders, and a loyal local population. It is also a town where a Stilton dairy that operated for nearly 250 years is now sitting empty on the edge of the centre, where a 1970s shopping arcade has been broken into repeatedly with no sign of resolution, and where eight-year-old shattered windows on a prominent former newspaper office have apparently become part of the accepted landscape.

None of this is inevitable. It is the result of choices — by individual landlords who have decided that doing nothing is preferable to the effort of marketing and maintaining their buildings, and by a council that has so far preferred encouragement and investment funds to enforcement.

The national picture provides important context. UK commercial vacancy rates hit a record 14.6% in mid-2025, according to the most recent EY/GeoDirectory data. High streets across the country are dealing with the structural shift away from retail, the collapse of bank branches, and the ongoing retreat of chain businesses. Melton is not uniquely blighted. But a town of its character and size — with a strong tourist trade built on its food heritage and market — has considerably more to lose from visual decay than a generic out-of-town retail park.

The BID’s call for landlords to accept a “duty to the business community” is the right message. But duty without consequence is just a request. Melton Borough Council now has Compulsory Rental Auction powers that could, in principle, force the issue on the most egregious long-term vacancies. The question is whether it will use them — or whether it will continue to wait politely for landlords to come around on their own schedule while the windows stay broken and the doors stay boarded.

We’ll be watching how the council responds to the Melton Times’ request for comment. And we’ll keep you informed about what, if anything, changes on the ground.

Have Your Say

Do you live or work in Melton Mowbray? Have the vacant properties in the town centre affected you — as a trader, a resident, or simply someone who uses the town? Do you think the council should use its new enforcement powers, or is this best left to the market? Leave a comment below and let us know what you think. Sign up for our free local updates if you want to follow this story as it develops.