Two shops of identical square footage can be worth very different rents, and the reason is almost never the total area. Retail is valued by zoning — the first six metres of depth carries the value and everything behind it halves away. Add the new retail multipliers from 1 April 2026, and the fact that Use Class E now lets a shop become a café, clinic or gym without planning permission, and the unit that looks expensive on £/sq ft is often the cheaper one to trade from.
Retail is valued in zones of roughly 6.1 metres depth, each worth half the one in front of it. A narrow, deep unit and a wide, shallow one of the same size produce very different rents and very different rateable values. We give you the Zone A rate and the zoned area, because that is what the rent is actually built from.
Since 2020 shops, cafés, offices, gyms, clinics and nurseries sit in one planning use class. Moving between them needs no planning permission. That widens who you can sublet or assign to, and it widens what you can trade as if the first idea does not work — but the lease can still forbid what planning allows.
From April 2026 retail, hospitality and leisure get permanently lower multipliers — 38.2p and 43p — replacing the annual relief scheme. But at £500,000 rateable value and above every use pays 50.8p, and the benefit disappears entirely. We tell you which side of that line a unit sits.
Our fee is paid by the landlord or the vendor. No fee to you and no retainer — and no reason for us to push you into a unit because the incentive is better on our side.
What you sell, the footfall and catchment you need, whether you need a shopfront or a destination will do, delivery and servicing access, extraction if you are cooking, and the date you must be trading by. For retail, trading pattern drives the search far more than budget does.
Zone A rate and zoned area, frontage width and internal depth, 2026 rateable value and which multiplier applies, service charge actuals, current use class and what the lease permits, extraction and plant, and whether the lease is contracted out of the 1954 Act — before you view.
Rent-free and fit-out contribution, break rights and their conditions, turnover rent mechanics if any, service charge caps and exclusions, keep-open and user clauses, a photographed schedule of condition, and what you must reinstate when you leave.
Almost every other property type is compared on price per square foot. Retail is not, and an owner who compares that way will reach the wrong answer confidently. Shops are valued by zoning: the space is divided into strips running back from the shopfront, conventionally about 6.1 metres (20 feet) deep. The first strip is Zone A and carries the full rate. Zone B is worth half of Zone A, Zone C half of Zone B, and anything beyond is "remainder" at a token figure. The industry calls it halving back.
The consequence is that frontage is worth far more than depth. A unit 9 metres wide and 9 metres deep and a unit 4.5 metres wide and 18 metres deep have the same floor area and are not worth the same rent, often not within 30%. Ancillary space — storage, staff rooms, basements, upper floors — is valued at a fraction again, which is why a shop with a large basement can look cheap on total area and be priced entirely normally on the part you actually trade from.
This matters beyond the rent. The Valuation Office uses the same zoning approach to set rateable value, so the shape of the unit drives your rates bill too. When you compare two units, ask for the Zone A rate and the zoned area, not the total square footage. If an agent cannot give you those, they have not analysed the unit.
From 1 April 2026 the annual retail, hospitality and leisure relief scheme is replaced by permanently lower RHL multipliers. In England the position is:
38.2p for RHL property with rateable value below £51,000, against 43.2p for everything else. 43p for RHL property between £51,000 and £499,999, against 48p for everything else. And 50.8p at £500,000 rateable value and above — for every use, retail included.
The 2026 list is also a revaluation, so the rateable values themselves are new. A unit whose rates you think you know from last year may be assessed very differently now. Ask for the current entry, not a historic bill, and if the assessment looks wrong the appeal route exists — but it runs to deadlines, so it is worth checking early rather than at renewal.
In September 2020 the use classes were restructured and Class E now covers shops, financial and professional services, cafés and restaurants, indoor sport and gyms, medical and health services, crèches and nurseries, and offices. Moving between any of those is not development and needs no planning permission.
For an occupier this is genuine flexibility: if the retail concept does not work, the unit can often become a clinic or a studio without a planning application. For an investor it widens the tenant pool considerably and is one of the reasons secondary retail has found floors it would not have found a decade ago.
But two things routinely catch people out. First, the lease can be narrower than planning. A user clause restricting the premises to "retail sale of goods" prevents what Class E permits, and landlords often keep it narrow deliberately to protect a tenant mix. Check the user clause, not just the use class. Second, hot food takeaway is sui generis and outside Class E entirely, as are pubs, bars and most drinking establishments — so the one change a struggling retailer most often wants to make is precisely the one that needs consent, and usually extraction and licensing with it.
Retail leases carry mechanics you will not meet in an office. Turnover rent — a base rent plus a percentage of sales above a threshold — is common in shopping centres and increasingly outside them. It can be a sensible risk-share, but the detail decides it: what counts as turnover, whether online orders fulfilled or returned in store are included, whether VAT and staff discounts come out first, what audit rights the landlord has, and whether the base rent ratchets. Agree the definition in writing; it is the single most disputed clause in centre leases.
A keep-open clause obliges you to trade during specified hours for the term. It sounds administrative and is not: it removes your ability to go dark on a unit that is losing money. Service charge in a managed centre or parade is materially higher than an office equivalent once marketing levies, centre management and security are in, so ask for three years of actual expenditure and the cap, and ask specifically what the marketing contribution buys.
On exit, your shopfit is usually your problem. Signage, flooring, fitted counters and the shopfront itself are typically reinstatement items. Photograph and agree a schedule of condition at the start, and negotiate what can stay. It is far cheaper to settle at heads of terms than at dilapidations.
Headline retail vacancy describes nothing in particular. Retail parks ran at around 6.1% vacancy in 2025 on CBRE's figures, while shopping centres carry the highest vacancy of any format and prime pitches in Central London and the strongest regional high streets sit far tighter than either. Knight Frank has forecast overall vacancy returning to roughly pre-pandemic levels, around 12.4%, by the end of 2026 — a forecast, not a measurement, and one that blends formats behaving in opposite directions.
What follows practically is that the national number should not inform your decision at all. Footfall counts for the specific pitch, the adjacent occupiers, which side of the street gets the morning trade, and whether the parade has parking are worth more than any index. For investors, the relevant question on a secondary unit is not where vacancy is heading but whether the unit can be re-let to the wider Class E pool, and at what rebased rent.
Since April 2023 a commercial unit cannot be let below EPC E without a registered exemption, and that includes shops. The proposed EPC C milestone for 2027 was dropped; the confirmed target is EPC B by 2031, and only for buildings over 1,000 square metres, still requiring secondary legislation. Most high street units sit below that threshold, so for them the minimum remains E — but an F or G rated shop cannot lawfully be let today without an exemption, and single-glazed, poorly heated older units are exactly where that bites.
Because retail is valued by zoning rather than by total area. The space is divided into strips about 6.1 metres deep running back from the shopfront, and each is worth half the one in front of it. Frontage therefore carries the value and depth adds progressively less. A wide, shallow unit and a narrow, deep one of identical floor area can differ in rent by 30% or more, entirely legitimately. Ask for the Zone A rate and the zoned area and the difference stops looking arbitrary.
In planning terms, usually yes without permission. Since September 2020 shops, cafés and restaurants, offices, gyms, clinics and nurseries all sit within Use Class E, and moving between them is not development. Two caveats matter. Your lease may restrict use more narrowly than planning does, so read the user clause. And hot food takeaway, pubs and bars fall outside Class E as sui generis uses, so those do need consent — usually alongside extraction and licensing.
From 1 April 2026 retail, hospitality and leisure property gets permanently lower multipliers in place of the old annual relief: 38.2p below £51,000 rateable value and 43p from £51,000 to £499,999, against 43.2p and 48p for other uses. At £500,000 and above every use pays 50.8p, so a large store loses the retail advantage entirely. It is also a revaluation year, so the rateable value itself may have moved — always check the current entry rather than last year's bill.
It can be, because it shares trading risk with the landlord, but it lives entirely in the definition. Establish what counts as turnover: whether online orders collected or returned in store are included, whether VAT, staff discounts and refunds come out first, what audit rights the landlord has and how often, and whether the base rent ratchets upward at review. A well-drafted turnover rent protects a new concept in an unproven pitch. A loosely drafted one is the most disputed clause in centre leases.
Typically your entire shopfit: signage, flooring, fitted counters, partitions and often the shopfront itself. Reinstatement is rarely modelled at heads of terms and is routinely a five-figure cost on a modest unit. Two things reduce it materially. Agree and photograph a schedule of condition before you take occupation, so you are not charged for wear that predates you. And negotiate in the lease — not in correspondence — which elements you may leave in place, since an incoming tenant often wants them.
