• IN our borough one of the most obvious casualties of rising rents and the increase in online shopping is the stretch of shops along Kentish Town Road and up Highgate Road where a number of small businesses have been vacant for years, some for decades.

Our high streets are dying as hubs of local community life, as independent entrepreneurs find themselves unable to compete with the big supermarkets, fast food chains, estate agents and the online shopping giants.

The shadow business secretary Rebecca Long-Bailey has called for reform of business rates and a register of landlords of empty shops to get people to back into using them to good community purpose.

Meanwhile the number of homeless people on our streets increases, many of whom have mental health issues. And the cold weather is coming.

Surely it is possible to think of developing incentives and disincentives to private landlords to put their vacant property to good social use, either by fining them after a period of years or by giving them some incentive to open up their spaces for alternative use.

Seeing empty property in use, whatever the purpose, is preferable to seeing it boarded up behind bars and padlocks. We urge the council to take a strong position on private empty property to develop an imaginative strategy for pressurising private landlords to use their vacant property for beneficial social purposes rather than market speculation.

HARRIET EVANS
Vice-chair, Highgate Branch Labour Party